by Scarlett Thomas ~ Thomas Allen & Son ~ Review: Halifax Herald, January 2011
Meg is a writer, just managing to get by writing book reviews and ghost writing genre fiction for adolescents, which nets her just enough cash to buy groceries and keep her damp basement apartment slightly above freezing.
Her moody, jealous boyfriend seems oblivious to the ever rising damp and Meg’s efforts to jolly him out of his funks are met with indifference at best. It is hard to understand what Meg sees in this sad-sack boyfriend, and when she finally makes a break for freedom from both him and the damp-infested apartment, Thomas’s reader will be thankful and slightly puzzled as to what took her so long.
A book mysteriously arrives in the mail, The Science of Living Forever, a pseudo-scientific book
about the end of time. The very idea stops Meg in her tracks. Instead of dismissing the content as pop-psyche at best, Meg is pulled into the book’s premise. Her‘proper’ novel morphs into a ‘storyless’ story, untidy and plot-less.
Our Tragic Universe is brimming with existential energy and philosophical debates as Meg struggles to extricate herself from her marginal existence. Once again, Thomas explores relationships and the human condition, but these explorations are tempered by the application of the ‘storyless’ story, which does mean that the plot (or non-plot) takes place primarily in the debates of the characters. Our Tragic Universe meanders, as was Thomas’s intention. However, the wit and nuance of her writing hold it together, making Meg’s story sympathetic and compelling.
Scarlett Thomas is a teacher, award-winning novelist and book reviewer. In 2002, she was listed as one of the twenty best young British writers. She teaches at the University of Kent in the UK where she specializes in the contemporary novel and narrative theory and practice.
