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Our Tragic Universe

3.42 of 5 stars 3.42 · rating details · 1,995 ratings · 395 reviews

Can a story save your life?
Meg Carpenter is broke. Her novel is years overdue. Her cell phone is out of minutes. And her moody boyfriend's only contribution to the household is his sour attitude. So she jumps at the chance to review a pseudoscientific book that promises life everlasting.
But who wants to live forever?
Consulting cosmology and physics, tarot cards, koan...more

Hardcover, 444 pages

Published by Canongate Books (first published 2010)

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Best Cover Art 2011 (Non-YA)

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The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

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Nov 06, 2012 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-about-books

Sigh. Scarlett Thomas -- you are endlessly frustrating.

Thomas is clearly intelligent; the ideas and concepts she weaves into her novels are bright, interesting, and fairly potent. The thing is...she knows she's intelligent. And it seems pretty important to her for you, the reader, to know it, too. It's not even that she's pretentious, or that her stories are -- well, not always, anyway -- but that she is so focused on her bright ideas that the stories themselves become...incidental. The End of M...more Sigh. Scarlett Thomas -- you are endlessly frustrating.

Thomas is clearly intelligent; the ideas and concepts she weaves into her novels are bright, interesting, and fairly potent. The thing is...she knows she's intelligent. And it seems pretty important to her for you, the reader, to know it, too. It's not even that she's pretentious, or that her stories are -- well, not always, anyway -- but that she is so focused on her bright ideas that the stories themselves become...incidental. The End of Mr. Y, PopCo, now Our Tragic Universe -- whether intentionally or not, the plots get lost in the Socratic-method shuffle of characters drinking wine and chatting about big ideas. In every conversation. I wish I knew as many intellectuals as supposedly lonely Meg does.

Now, I wouldn't say this is inherently a bad thing -- in fact, it's always nice to get some new (or at least newly-stated) ideas about metafiction, the artifice of narrative, and so on. And her characters, while (probably intentionally) not exactly likeable, are interesting archetypes and pastiches thereof. And, Thomas hits the nail on the head when her protagonist tells a friend to "fictionalise" his would-be scientific theory -- big ideas like those in Our Tragic Universe work best in fiction, when they aren't brought down by non-fiction's search for proof. But there are only so many times an author can use the same basic story as a vehicle for new ideas (brilliant down-on-her-luck broke female thirty-something protagonist with interest in older man sending her on literary/culturally revelatory quest [or questlike non-quest]? She's already written that book...twice) before it gets obvious, and irritating.

This is one of few cases, however, where an ending really saves it. Whereas in The End of Mr. Y, the book started strong and fizzled out, Our Tragic Universe really gives its ideological punch in the last 100-or-so pages. Nothing is "properly" resolved, though it's all been set up to be -- and that, for the genre-guzzling reader, is frustrating. As, of course, it's meant to be.

To be frustrating, though, isn't all that bad. Thomas wants to provoke her audience, and that's just what she's doing. I may find fault with her method, and the fact that she's as guilty of re-using plot/character/genre conventions as Meg ---- but ultimately, she pulls it off. And storyless story or no, when a book has this much impact -- it's worth that fourth star.(less)

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Oct 05, 2010 Blair rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, favourites

This is without a doubt one of the best books I've read all year, but it's quite a difficult one to review. It's hard to explain what the story is actually about; in many ways, it isn't really about anything, but without giving too much away, that's sort of the point.

Scarlett Thomas's last novel, The End of Mr. Y, was very good, but disappointed me because - after a fantastic start - the ending strayed too far into fantasy and became slightly ridiculous. Because of the similar cover, and the pro...more

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Apr 22, 2011 trishtrash rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In homage to Scarlett Thomas’ narrative experiment, I am sorely tempted to review the black paperback edges (gimmicky, annoying) rather than the story (gimmicky, annoying) on the principle that the review would be to the book as the plot is to the author – that is to say, only peripherally relevant, something that gets in the way of all the clever thoughts she’s had while writing.

Loosely speaking, there’s a relationship plot that might have been a bit too chick-lit for my taste, anyway, what wi...more

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Jul 19, 2010 Jason (FNORDinc) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebook, arc, reviewed, reviewed-on-fnordinc

Review: Our Tragic Universe, Scarlett Thomas

Forewarning, this is a positive review though I can see where it might not appear that way. It was just a very hard book to write about!

Our Tragic Universe (originally to be titled ‘Death of the Author’) is a nonstandard plot. Part time writer Meg is living in a small town England. She is living unhappily with her long term boyfriend and her dog, barely scraping by. Meg is continually trying to write her “Real Novel”, editing and paring down her words,...more Review: Our Tragic Universe, Scarlett Thomas

Forewarning, this is a positive review though I can see where it might not appear that way. It was just a very hard book to write about!

Our Tragic Universe (originally to be titled ‘Death of the Author’) is a nonstandard plot. Part time writer Meg is living in a small town England. She is living unhappily with her long term boyfriend and her dog, barely scraping by. Meg is continually trying to write her “Real Novel”, editing and paring down her words, never able to solidify where she wants to take it. In the meantime, she takes on the grunt work of the literary world, reviews of trash novels for a newspaper, and ghost writing teen fiction using formulaic methods.

Meg is caught in an interesting kludge of personal issues. Her best friend is having an affair that is messy. long time friends have stopped speaking to her. Her boyfriend is spiraling into depression and taking her on a manic roller coaster as he falls. She feels trapped and unaccomplished. Her only real bonus is a love interest in a man nearly twice her age, married, who she doesn’t dare see anymore since they accidentally kissed. Early in the book, Meg inadvertently takes on a review for some kind of new age “how the afterlife works by bob-know-it-all” book and the flavor of the story really begins to ripen. Oh yeah, and I should mention there is a mysterious beast prowling the neighboring townships scaring the hell out of the residents…

The story is vibrant but many readers may be confused by the cluttered nature of the novel. it is cluttered just as life itself is, so it is fitting, though as a result, difficult to read. At some points, OTU read like a reality TV show for a person who has absolutely nothing interesting going on in their life, detailing minutia like knitting. At other points, it is a technical reading manual for obsessive compulsive literature majors. This could have been toned down and approached less lecture like, but in the end, was an important part of the novel’s structure. .

Previously mentioned, the plot of Tragic Universe is nonstandard in the fact that it really doesn’t have a core/central plot. Items that you think are key plot points are proven to be red-herrings, no more important to life than the number of concurrent green lights you drove through on the way to work today. Interestingly though, it highlights how many things we notice daily which have no importance, but to which we add false importance.

Regardless, all of the characters are interesting and well thought out. it was these that kept me coming back for more. I nearly stopped reading this book 7-8 times. Each time I prepped to give up on it, some small detail would catch my attention again and I was drawn back in for another 30-40 pages.

Ultimately, I believe this waxing/waning of interest may have been part of Scarlett’s intent as she wrote this “storyless-story”. Really, it is nothing more than a sign of the abilities of the author, in that she wrote something so realistic/painful, that giving up and utter enthrallment are with in breaths of each other. Reading OTU was like a broken ceiling fan on a very hot day, I kept fiddling with it- trying to make it work. Frustrated, at times felt like a pointless endeavor, but in the end, when the gears moved and the air flowed over my sweat beaded forehead, the effort was worth it, a welcome cool breeze to mellow the experience.

I would not suggest this book for people who are easily frustrated, trust me here. Also, if you prefer your books garnished, placed on a plate, and then fed to you in bite size portions, you may not enjoy this and should perhaps look toward other reading material.

To quote the novel (referencing everyday life having less “story”), “You just have to let go of the plot when it gets too much. Do something else”. Though there were many times I wanted to stop reading, I instead just took breaks from it and am glad I completed it. Our Tragic Universe was a literary vacation, a trip away from the normal methodologies employed by authors, memorable in both it’s genius, complexity, and bearable frustration.

-- FNORDinc.com
http://www.fnordinc.com/2010/07-19/re...(less)

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May 10, 2013 Elizabeth Ducie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is an enjoyable book that can be read on several different levels. The main theme is the story of Meg. It describes her web of relationships, particularly those around Dartmouth. Meg lives with Christopher, but is unsure whether this is a good thing or not. She earns a living from a series of science fiction stories she has written as well as being part of a group of writers who publish under the name of Zeb Ross. These all form distractions from her completing or even progressing with her...more

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Jan 31, 2013 Stevedutch rated it 2 of 5 stars

After loving its two immediate predecessors; ‘Popco’ and ‘The End of Mr Y’ I had great hopes for ‘Our Tragic Universe’: alas, to no avail. It is quite difficult to give an overview of the plot since there really isn’t one in the commonly accepted understanding of the word; i.e. the narrative of a sequence of events, usually temporally ordered so that effect may be construed from likely cause and all intended to evoke within the reader an emotional response arising, again commonly, by the resolut...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Ally rated it 2 of 5 stars

Today I went to the supermarket to pick up some cigarettes. Some bitch with a lottery ticket cut right in front of me in the queue, looked me right in the eye while she did it too, daring me to challenge her. I did not. I had a really long discussion with the woman at the till about how I do not look my age, and how I'm constantly carded because I look sixteen when really I am almost twenty-four. This was a boring discussion. Then I remembered that I needed milk. I thought for a moment there was...more Today I went to the supermarket to pick up some cigarettes. Some bitch with a lottery ticket cut right in front of me in the queue, looked me right in the eye while she did it too, daring me to challenge her. I did not. I had a really long discussion with the woman at the till about how I do not look my age, and how I'm constantly carded because I look sixteen when really I am almost twenty-four. This was a boring discussion. Then I remembered that I needed milk. I thought for a moment there was none left in the size of jug that I like. Then I looked closer and I saw some right at the bottom way at the back. So I grabbed two jugs and then paid for it. Then I walked home. It took me around forty minutes to walk home and I got to thinking about what it's all about. I mean what's going on with me and with life in the general sense. I'd had a massive row with my boyfriend earlier in the day I was going over it, figuring out who was right and who was wrong. I saw a couple of dogs playing in the park on my way past. I thought how wonderful it would be to have the attitude of a dog: there's no yesterday, there's no tomorrow, there's only the here and now, chasing this ball and fleeing about like nobody's business. Those dogs were just bursting with joy at the treat of being alive! So I got home and tossed out the recycling because it's Thursday and then sorted through some laundry. I made some tea. I smoked a couple of my cigarettes. I stared out the window. I live on the second floor of my apartment block and it can be fun to sit and watch the seagulls soar as they are right at eye level. Sometimes they fly so close to the window, screaming and wheeling around. They wind the cats right up. I got to thinking some more about the way that animals live in the moment, every second of their lives is about that second. They make no plans, they have no regrets. These seagulls cared for nothing at that moment except their flight. I do not know what they were doing. Maybe they didn't know either. So after a while I got tired of sitting there so I roamed around a little and then I put on my running shoes and went for a run up to the river and then back. It was chilly, but not a cutting cold as it had been during my run the previous day. And on and on and blah and blah and yawn ......

And are you getting my point? This is Our Tragic Universe, or rather my tragic universe. This is a story about daily life with no plot. It's going nowhere. I could ramble on some more. I could add in some interesting events, I've got plenty. I could give more of an insight into my opinions and thoughts on the world around me, I've got plenty of those too ....But they won't add anything to the main plot, because there is no main plot. There's just me, living my life. Shit happens along the way but essentially I'm just staggering along doing the best I can, the same of which can be said about the storyline in Our Tragic Universe. Or the lack of storyline. I know, I know ..... This is supposed to be the whole point. Can we bend the literary rules and create a novel with no conventional outline? Can we create the storyless story? The answer, in my opinion, is no. Not if you want people to care.

I did not care for Meg. The portrayal of her dying relationship with Christopher was the only redeeming thing about an otherwise pretentious and highly dull character. This book is far too heavy in, I'm sure what Scarlett Thomas hopes is deep, meaningful, enlightening and thought provoking conversations between a lively cast of characters but in actual fact comes across as pompous ramblings about creating a truly original narrative, the history of tarot cards and the relationship between Tolstoy and Chekhov to name a few topics. There's an awful lot of this conversation which sounds suspiciously like it's come straight out of a college fiction workshop, which really begins to grate after a while. At the end of the day there's only so much of this ridiculous dialog I can take without a decent story line to back it up and pad it out. It would be easier to tolerate if something was actually going on. Because strip all that endless talking away and you're left with nothing more interesting than that story I told above about my day. And who the hell wants to hear about that?

I wish Scarlett Thomas would stop trying so hard to dazzle us with her ideas about time and space and physics. I wish she'd be more subtle about it rather than shoehorning it in there and trying to cram it down our throats until our eyes are actually watering. I do truly wish this as I think she has some wonderful, thought provoking ideas and I really enjoy her writing style and her descriptions. I just can't stand to be made to feel stupid, as if these interesting ideas need to be spelled out to me and repeated over and over as if that's the only way I'll understand. Please .... I'm not an idiot.

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Dec 14, 2012 awbrey rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found Our Tragic Universe very enjoyable at times and ponderous at others. With so many interesting supernatural elements - spirits, beasts, childhood memories of people doing real magic, childhood friends who might have faked their deaths - and earthly personal drama - affairs, loser boyfriends, broken friendships - this book had the potential to be so much more than it actually is.

At some point, I lost Scarlett Thomas's message. I was more interested in the mysterious goings on than the nar...more I found Our Tragic Universe very enjoyable at times and ponderous at others. With so many interesting supernatural elements - spirits, beasts, childhood memories of people doing real magic, childhood friends who might have faked their deaths - and earthly personal drama - affairs, loser boyfriends, broken friendships - this book had the potential to be so much more than it actually is.

At some point, I lost Scarlett Thomas's message. I was more interested in the mysterious goings on than the narrator and her friends discussing narrative and levels of spiritual power (one of the things that was just too odd for me). I couldn't understand why Meg would tolerate Christopher, who is such an obvious loser and jerk, and I was honestly shocked when I learned that Meg is almost forty. She seemed more like a twenty-something hipster to me. And once Meg focused on Rowan, I wondered why she was interested in him, because he's not very compelling, either. It seemed sometimes that the characters must be based on people Thomas actually knows, so she didn't develop them much for the reader because they existed so tangibly in her own mind.

There is a lot of repetition. Meg's always peeling a tangerine or walking on the beach; she talks to the same people about the same things and people again and again. The book meanders, intentionally, I think, because it seems to be metafiction, and a storyless story, and about itself as much as anything else. However, like I said, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to actually buy into the weird theories of the universe and ideas about homeopathic medicine and placebos and paradoxes and narratives just because the characters in the book kept talking about them, or if that was just a way to bring about conversations and events that carried the story along. (Especially since, at one point, Meg comments that people are more likely to take seriously things they read in fiction than things that are supposed to be scientific or non-fiction, which people then want to challenge and question.)

One final note - towards the beginning of the book, Meg says that black holes suck. Maybe I missed some sarcasm or a little joke, but for a book that's so riddled with scientific ideas and discussions about scientific studies etc, and narrated by a character with a background in science, you'd expect Meg to know that black holes aren't like giant vacuum cleaners, they don't suck things in. Such a small thing, but it really stood out to me for some reason!(less)

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Sep 04, 2012 Ali rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Had I been at any other point in my life, I would have hated this book. However, like Meg, I'm feeling a bit lost and aimless at the moment, and I think that is why it resonated with me. I liked Meg as a character, and I was much more interested in her life and friends than their meta, pretentious discussions they would have about storytelling, life, and the universe. I do not think that it is some eye-opening, clever, philosophical analysis of life, but I think the author was trying to achieve...more

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Jun 18, 2012 Rebecca eley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who like story less stories!

Recommended to Rebecca by: me

Shelves: my-cult-fiction

I did not enjoy this as much as either Popco or the End of Mr Why. There is constant reference to the idea of a story less story. I have quite possibly got the wrong end of the stick but it felt a bit like a story less story. It has certainly inspired me to name one of my bookshelves after the concept.

The book’s main character is Meg who lives is in an almost non relationship with Christopher. Her best friend is Libby, struggling with her own relationship wows. You also see a fair bit of Christ...more

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Jan 08, 2012 Alytha rated it 2 of 5 stars

Finished Scarlett Thomas' latest novel, Our Tragic Universe.

I'm not actually sure whether I liked this novel. It's somewhere between a meta-fictional literary experiment about the nature of story and the storyless novel, and a heap of selfwankery pretentious crap.
On the one hand, the human relationships are quite nicely described, and enough weird and interesting things happen to keep you reading. On the other hand, the endless discussions that the characters have about literary theory, the natu...more Finished Scarlett Thomas' latest novel, Our Tragic Universe.

I'm not actually sure whether I liked this novel. It's somewhere between a meta-fictional literary experiment about the nature of story and the storyless novel, and a heap of selfwankery pretentious crap.
On the one hand, the human relationships are quite nicely described, and enough weird and interesting things happen to keep you reading. On the other hand, the endless discussions that the characters have about literary theory, the nature of narrative, and so on, reminded me a lot of my less interesting university courses on postmodern literature.
The similarities between Scarlett Thomas and her protagonist Meg sometimes appear clever, but sometimes it just looks as if Thomas was desperately trying to come up with THE NOVEL of the English language, and when she couldn't just decided to write a novel about not being able to do it. A bit like Meg ends up doing. Is that second stage metafiction already?

Something annoying was Meg's steadfast refusal to accept the supernatural, despite having met faeries as a child, their neighours having a poltergeist, and good stuff mysteriously starting to show up after the "ordered" it from the universe, the Beast showing up.... Her world seems to run on narrativum, like the Discworld. Certain things happen because the narrative requires them to happen in order for that kind of story to work.

The philosophy about the Omega Point is reasonably interesting, but in the end doesn't lead anywhere other than to long pointless discussions. The theory is based on the convergent evolution theory by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, which states that evolution is continuing with a very clear aim in mind: the creation of a god, or god-like being in power and intellect. This is of course a fallacy, as evolution is not going anywhere, but just promoting what works best at a given time under given circumstances.

This theory and the Omega Point was explored in a much more clear and interesting way in Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos series. Which is pure genius, by the way, and should be required reading for every self-respecting sci-fi fan with a brain. (yes, the man is spouting weird things these days. That doesn't in any way devaluate these books. And this is not Orson Scott Card we're talking about here, after all)

In short, I don't really know how to rate this novel. There are very interesting passages in it, but on the whole, I was constantly waiting for something to happen...

6/10 or something thereabouts.(less)

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Dec 26, 2011 Leonie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Some people seem to like this a great deal less than Thomas's previous novel The End of Mr Y, whereas I thought they were pretty much the same novel. Like with that, I liked all the interesting things she was trying to write about, and the sense of a strident conviction that more is more, and with Our Tragic Universe, I liked the way she captured doomed (or should-be-doomed), stifling relationships. But again I thought that if she really wanted to capture her subjects, she needed to be much bett...more

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Nov 04, 2011 Don Hackett rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not sure what I think. The book has the elements of an ordinary novel or story: a likable woman protagonist; a boyfriend she might breakup with; a best friend who is having an affair; an older man who the protagonist might want to have an affair with; a career she is dissatisfied with; and money problems. Her career is writing, and after an award for a new writer, she is stalled writing anonymous young adult novels and the occasional science fiction novel. When she edits her work on her Seri...more

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Oct 06, 2011 Rebecca Simmonds rated it 5 of 5 stars

By the end of this novel I had at least seven new friends. Well, I’m not sure how they felt about me but I was certainly interested in the questions they’d sprung upon me. I was just finishing my novel, preparing my blog and dreaming of how I could indeed sell many, many, copies, write more books, sell more of them and then live happily ever after. I was like any other character in every western Apprentice-style, X-factor story. I was, like them: “fuelled by desire for change” for the want of a...more

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Sep 08, 2011 Freya Russell-Hobson rated it 3 of 5 stars

In the usual style of Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic Universe had plenty of science and philosophy, mixed up with semi-tragic love affairs and a healthy dose of unresolved sexual tension. Our heroine, Meg, is a lost soul who writes for a living and spends her life wishing for what she doesn't have, trapped in an unhappy relationship. She's almost tragic, in the traditional sense of the the protagonist shooting themselves in the foot by allowing their flaws to run wild (ruined friendships, semi-succ...more

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Aug 22, 2011 Lexie Conyngham rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is the first of Scarlett Thomas’ books I have read, and I only read it by accident – a friend cast it aside feeling that it was not as described on the cover, and indeed the cover is not the best bit – it’s confusing and messy. But that’s not the book!
The story, if it is one (and it probably deliberately isn’t), concerns Meg, a struggling writer with a thoroughly unattractive boyfriend and house (so damp it affects her asthma). Meg has a contract for a ‘proper’ novel but is constantly dist...more This is the first of Scarlett Thomas’ books I have read, and I only read it by accident – a friend cast it aside feeling that it was not as described on the cover, and indeed the cover is not the best bit – it’s confusing and messy. But that’s not the book!
The story, if it is one (and it probably deliberately isn’t), concerns Meg, a struggling writer with a thoroughly unattractive boyfriend and house (so damp it affects her asthma). Meg has a contract for a ‘proper’ novel but is constantly distracted by having to write genre fiction to survive, and by the fact that she is unable to commit herself to a plot. She has fallen out with some of her closest friends in a discussion on narrative theory, and has fallen in love with a much older man who is also in a long-term relationship. One of her best friends is having an affair and can’t choose between the two men in her life, and there are many (perhaps too many) other characters who meander in and out of her life and her memories. She had a strange and unresolved experience with a couple in a wood when she was a child, and there are references to her childhood friend, now a famous actress living with Meg’s ex-boyfriend, who may or may not have attracted a poltergeist. There may be an unexplained wild animal in the neighbourhood – is that what is scratching at the door? Knitting also features (though I’m not sure it’s portrayed accurately – most experienced knitters do not consider sock knitting that difficult). These oddly unrelated incidents, along with Meg’s final decision to leave her boyfriend, pepper the narrative randomly. In the end, Meg decides to abandon genre fiction and base her ‘proper’ novel on the contents of her notebook, interspersed with diary entries and remarks from her real life. Curiously (oh, what a coincidence) this is what the actual book seems to be.
Never mind: I liked Meg, despite her considerable weaknesses, and I read to the end very happily, feeling a bit as if I was listening to a friend telling me randomly about the last year or so of her life on a pleasant evening in front of the fire. Don’t expect resolutions here – life goes on!
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May 26, 2011 Ahalya rated it 5 of 5 stars

http://www.literaryangels.com/blog/bo...

When a writer begins to ask herself ‘what’s the point of writing anything’, you know she may never get back to writing again. There is something inherently so poisonous in the question ‘why’ that it strangulates all creativity, and all desire. Questioning the motive for spending lots of energy and time on putting down words on paper (or on any other activity, come to think of it), is the last stage of writer’s block and is something that can be cured only...more http://www.literaryangels.com/blog/bo...

When a writer begins to ask herself ‘what’s the point of writing anything’, you know she may never get back to writing again. There is something inherently so poisonous in the question ‘why’ that it strangulates all creativity, and all desire. Questioning the motive for spending lots of energy and time on putting down words on paper (or on any other activity, come to think of it), is the last stage of writer’s block and is something that can be cured only by the most powerful miracle the universe can summon up.

Meg Carpenter is stuck with bills to pay; a damp house that aggravates her asthma; a boyfriend who is an unpaid volunteer at a heritage site; deadlines for book reviews she must get around to doing; and a novel she wishes to write, but doesn’t know how to begin. In short Meg’s mind is ripe for some philosophising, some desperate plans for making money, and a billion excuses to rationalise why she cannot write anymore.

Our Tragic Universe was by far the best book I have read in the longest time. The plot was believable, the characters were as real as me, there were interesting snippets of information about physics, immortality, magic, philosophy, literature, and life. But, what I liked best about this book was that it was a no-holds barred look at a real writer’s life. This is exactly how most writers think, criticise, worry, debate, question, and analyse writing and the world they write about! Add to this a healthy dose of supernatural incidents, lost friends, a new house by the beach, a jolly dog, and frequent discussions about the art of writing and characterisation, and this becomes a book that has to be read over and over again.

Let me show you an excerpt. So, here we are — Meg who has to write a novel not just because that’s what she believes is her calling, but also because she needs the money is at her wit’s end because she doesn’t know where to begin, has this conversation with her friend in a pub:

“… How cool is this: I’m going to structure the whole thing as a writer’s notebook, just like one of mine. It’s going to be all non-linear and experimental and the reader will have to put together the story for him- or herself. I thought it meant I’d have to start again from the very beginning – again- but I’ve just realised I can use loads of stuff I’ve already written, sort of as “draft material’… In fact, I think I might just make the writer dead. Maybe her notebook has washed up like a message in a bottle or something, and then the reader has to work out what’s happened to her from fragments of her real and fictional narratives…’

Libby frowned. ‘So there won’t be any story, just notes?’

‘Yeah, but the notes will come together to make a story, or maybe two stories. I guess it’s hard to describe, but I can see exactly how it will work. I think you can have too much story…’

Could Scarlett Thomas be referring to this book? Did I mention that she teaches creative writing in Kent? This book has the feel of being quite non-linear and experimental, and yes, the frequent diversions into various subjects make this exactly like the book Meg wants to write. That’s a clever way of juggling narratives, characterisation, and reality/fiction.

I must confess that I liked this book so much that I began visualising me as the protagonist. There I was walking the beach with my dog, looking for a mythical beast, wondering how to get out of a stagnant relationship, talking to the Universe and asking for money, and tragically, coming to terms with the fact that maybe I could never write at all, maybe I never had been able to write.

A must-read for those who want to write. Totally recommended!

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May 15, 2011 Anna Maria Ballester Bohn rated it 3 of 5 stars

I can't seem to bring myself to give more than three stars to anything lately, except when it's Thomas Mann. Anyway, I did enjoy this, but it took me a while to realize that, in fact, nothing was going to happen. Of course, a lot of stuff does happen, but it's not significant in the way fiction has made us expect things must be. Which is one of the charms of this book, I guess. Maybe I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd known what to expect; the truth is, I'd just picked it up because a friend had me...more

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Feb 22, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars

"How do you survive the end of time? It is quite simple. By the time the universe is old enough and frail enough to collapse, humans will be able to do whatever they like with it...By then it'll just be a case of wheeling one decrepit planet to one side of the universe while another one pisses itself sadly in another galaxy. And all this while waiting for the final crunch, as everything becomes everything else as the universe begins its beautiful collapse, panting and sweating until all life arc...more "How do you survive the end of time? It is quite simple. By the time the universe is old enough and frail enough to collapse, humans will be able to do whatever they like with it...By then it'll just be a case of wheeling one decrepit planet to one side of the universe while another one pisses itself sadly in another galaxy. And all this while waiting for the final crunch, as everything becomes everything else as the universe begins its beautiful collapse, panting and sweating until all life arcs out of it and all matter in existence is crushed into a single point and then disappears."

What makes Scarlett Thomas' writing stand out is her gift of largesse--the narrator's generosity combined with a brainy appeal that tunneled fluidly into my psyche. She is plainspoken and warm and yet finely cultivated. Thomas introduces esoteric principles as if it were the natural state of things. She can talk about Derrida and Darwin in a way that is effortless, intuitive. Her protagonist's voice is addictive and honest; indeed, Meg's thoughts mirror the everyday banter inside my head. Like an overlapping image in pictures, her voice became my voice.

Meg is stuck. She is stuck in a dead-end relationship with Christopher, while her lips sting from a memorable kiss with unavailable Rowan. She lives in a damp, asthma-inducing flat in Totnes, bogged down in a job writing reviews of science books, as well as ghost-writing plot-o-matic, genre sci-fi. The novel she began long ago is headed toward entropy. Every time she adds 800 words, she deletes 780 more. At present, Meg has 43 words, and just about that many £ left to her name.

At this time, Meg is reviewing a new science book by Kelsey Newman, who has written The Science Of Living Forever. Newman advances the theory of the coming Omega Point, which is the moment that the universe becomes so dense and full of energy that it will be able to simulate another universe, a new one that will never end, and one in which we will live happily ever after. Forever. Meg dismisses this hypothesis, but it lodges in her mind and lingers in her thoughts.

OUR TRAGIC UNIVERSE is not a post-modern novel, despite the implications of the jacket blurb. Yes, there are big ideas and lots of brilliant concepts buzzing on the pages, and speculative philosophies layering the story. But the core of the novel is about love; second chances; the future; the fabric of the universe; how to knit socks; a dog named Bess; a beast from Dartmoor; and how to write a storyless story that may save your life. It is an accessible labyrinth, a compelling page-turner that frequently made me feel smarter than I am and more hopeful than I thought I could be. It is a journey of the mind and body, and there's plenty of love and friendship and everyday twists and tangles.

My only (and very minor) complaint is that Meg, who is similar (in voice and sensibilities) to Alice, in Thomas' earlier PopCo, thrashes far longer than Alice in her muddling inertia--a bit of navel-gazing. But she is gradually climbing out of her torpor, for the threat of failure has imposed itself on a woman who believes only in its spectacular opposite.

This book is alive with keen contradictions and spirited connections. These are characters you can relate to; they have problems that are infinitely human. The prose flows with reflective, radiant purity and clarity that will cast you under her spell and give you fairy wings to fly through the pages. The narrator's tone is like the best friend you always wanted to have. Scarlett Thomas is a celestial storyteller--a supernova, a literary bodhisattva. (less)

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Jan 15, 2011 Laurie rated it 5 of 5 stars

“Our Tragic Universe” is a novel with very little plot, and yet I found myself deeply involved in it. The characters aren’t heroes or exceptional; while they have some deep discussions at times they face the same problems others do- mostly relationship problems- and react to them in the same ways that the average person does. I don’t know if the book engaged me so much in spite of this or because of this.

The protagonist, Meg Carpenter, is living the typical free lancers life- always broke, work...more

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Jan 03, 2011 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels, philosophy

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 28, 2010 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a complex novel. It doesn’t always read like one and you can get lulled into a false sense of security if you’re not careful. By ‘complex’ I mean ‘clever’ but it is also a hodgepodge. I mean that in the nicest possible way. There is just so much material in it and I’m not entirely convinced she manages to make all the disparate elements cohere but she has a damn good crack at it. This is, of course, based on a single read through. I suspect, had I the time and the inclination, then it wo...more

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Oct 12, 2010 Sam rated it 5 of 5 stars

Scarlett Thomas comes through, at least for me, again with another exceptional book. If you've read some of her others and liked them, notably The End of Mr. y, and PopCo, you might really like this book. But you have to ask yourself first. What is it about the past books that you liked? Was it the story, the way the suspense was really well crafted? Or was it more the philosophy and ideas she played with in the novels?

If its the former, you might want to get this one from the library, if its th...more

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Sep 19, 2010 Felice rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ah! Cover magic works again. This cover was too delicious to pass up. I had to look. Yahoo! It's a new book by Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic Universe. Isn't it great to come across a book by an author you like that you didn't know about? Oh happy day. I have already read The End of Mr. Y and loved it. That one is a fascinating novel about an unread book, science, death, time travel and brilliant writing. It's also another A+ cover. Before that there was the brilliant PopCo where Alice must solve t...more Ah! Cover magic works again. This cover was too delicious to pass up. I had to look. Yahoo! It's a new book by Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic Universe. Isn't it great to come across a book by an author you like that you didn't know about? Oh happy day. I have already read The End of Mr. Y and loved it. That one is a fascinating novel about an unread book, science, death, time travel and brilliant writing. It's also another A+ cover. Before that there was the brilliant PopCo where Alice must solve the riddle of the anonymous notes with her codebreaking skills and at the same time stop the power hungry corporation and find her missing father.
Writer Meg Carpenter's Tragic Universe is stuck in a boring relationship, wildly attracted to a 65 year old professor, broke, her career is a hand to mouth mish-mash of teaching writing, freelance work, ghostwriting and Ya thrillers written under a pen name. She does have a Serious Literary Novel in the works but it is way past deadline and keeps expanding and then shrinking back to the same 43 words on a regular basis. Her friends lives are on a similar level of dysfunction. When Meg is offered a job reviewing The Science of Living Forever she is eager to take the assignment. A girl's got to make a living right? It turns out that The Science of Living Forever wasn't sent to her by an editor to review but instead by some maybe mystical force that might now be bringing a level of coincidence into her life that is bordering on the magical.

That's it for the usual will Annie end up happy and save the farm storytelling stuff in Our Tragic Universe. Then? Nothing but questions. Big nature of things and what is fictions kinds of questions. Now the page turning begins. An idea novel that is a page turner? Nontraditional storytelling that I ate up? Seriously? Oh yes my friend and there's knitting too! This is unconventional fiction that is funny and energetic. It's got all the big elements of book boredom for me: science, philosophy and intellectual ruminations. With Scarlett Thomas behind them I can cheer. I was fascinated. The more novels she writes the smarter and more entertained I become.

Our Tragic Universe made me sad. I'll never be able to read it again for the first time. ~Sob~(less)

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Jun 17, 2010 David Hebblethwaite rated it 3 of 5 stars

Given that I rather disliked the two Scarlett Thomas novels I’d previously read (Bright Young Things and PopCo), you might reasonably wonder why I even contemplated reading a third. Curiosity, I suppose — I just wanted to see if I could find one that I liked. And, well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I particularly liked Our Tragic Universe, but certainly I found it a more worthwhile read than those earlier novels.

Meg Carpenter is a struggling writer, trying (and largely failing) to make ends me...more Given that I rather disliked the two Scarlett Thomas novels I’d previously read (Bright Young Things and PopCo), you might reasonably wonder why I even contemplated reading a third. Curiosity, I suppose — I just wanted to see if I could find one that I liked. And, well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I particularly liked Our Tragic Universe, but certainly I found it a more worthwhile read than those earlier novels.

Meg Carpenter is a struggling writer, trying (and largely failing) to make ends meet with genre novels and reviews of science books. Her latest book for review outlines a theory of how we might all live (subjectively) forever when the universe ends – or, indeed, might already be doing so without knowing it. All nonsense, thinks Meg, and she’s not keen on the idea of living forever anyway. Events take a strange turn, however, when it transpires that her editor didn’t send Meg this book at all – so where did it come from? Is it coincidence, or a sign of higher purpose in the universe? Does Meg even care? Should we?

In some ways, it’s hard to know what to say to a novel that more or less tells you that it’s not going to play ball. There are repeated mentions of concepts like the ‘storyless story’, and Meg comments that she’d prefer it if the universe didn’t have meaning – one can pretty much see where Our Tragic Universe is (or, rather, isn’t) going. This is resolutely a novel of anti-discovery, where the mysteries of the world will not only not be solved, they’ll hardly be investigated; where characters would rather evade their personal problems than tackle them head on (as an example, near the beginning of the book, one of Meg’s friends takes the extreme step of pushing her car into the river to cover up the fact that she’s having an affair); where life goes on, but doesn’t necessarily progress (Meg is supposedly working on a literary novel, but all she ends up doing over the course of Thomas’s book is scrapping more and more of it). But, fair’s fair, we were warned it’d be like this.

As for me, I see in Our Tragic Universe some of the characteristics that irritated me about PopCo and Bright Young Things, notably quite a lot of awkwardly-inserted exposition. But… somehow it doesn’t seem to matter so much this time. I think that’s because the book is so single-minded and open about its intentions (and successful in achieving them) that I’m happy to sit back and let it all unfold. So, I can appreciate that Our Tragic Universe is very good at what it does – as I said earlier, though, liking it is a different matter.(less)

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May 29, 2010 Melinda rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I love Scarlett Thomas. Thanks to her, I know about code-breaking, homeopathy and now cosmic ordering, Scarlett writes intricate and beautiful novels, punctuated with the most amazing things; including maths, science and the esoteric.

I shouldn’t have bought Our Tragic Universe. I’m on a strict budget ‘til after July and that means no new books. But I had to go and look in Waterstones and there it was, resplendent in black and gold. And I bought it.

And I loved it.

Not a huge surprise, she reall...more I love Scarlett Thomas. Thanks to her, I know about code-breaking, homeopathy and now cosmic ordering, Scarlett writes intricate and beautiful novels, punctuated with the most amazing things; including maths, science and the esoteric.

I shouldn’t have bought Our Tragic Universe. I’m on a strict budget ‘til after July and that means no new books. But I had to go and look in Waterstones and there it was, resplendent in black and gold. And I bought it.

And I loved it.

Not a huge surprise, she really is a most talented writer. This is the third Scarlett Thomas book I’ve read and it has cemented the fact that I want to be her. I want to have tea with her and eat cake with her and have her tell me all about flower remedies and maths and crosswords and codes and the future and dreams. And I like that vegetarianism, homeopathy, crosswords and the future come up again in Our Tragic Universe, It’s like putting on your favourite pyjamas when you come home on a miserable day. Her work is never, ever same-y but I enjoy that some things are always there, like a silvery thread between all of them.

So…the book: Meg Carpenter is a writer of genre fiction for the YA market and a would-be writer of Very Important Literature. She lives the quintessential writer’s life in a run-down cottage by the sea, with her moody and sensitive boyfriend and faithful dog. And yet she seems to be the centre point for Odd Things. Since childhood, strange things have happened around her, meetings with odd people in magical places, paranormal activity, strange coincidences, healing powers, wishes granted, etc. But she is very straightforward and almost pragmatic and doesn’t believe in most of it. So when she accidentally reviews a book about immortality and the end of the universe, it opens a chasm in her world that sees everything changing.

I loved this book. It was slower than Mr Y or Popco (the only other two of her works I’ve been lucky enough to read), but it works. Like her other books, I’m going to have to re-read it – but that’s the beauty of Scarlett’s writing. Some books only need one read and then you know all you need to and you’re done. But not hers. I will have to read this at least another four times before I understand it. And I like that. For the next few days I will feel as though I am part of a very big and important secret and that I am just ten minutes away from understanding everything. That is where a Scarlett Thomas book leaves you.

Popco and Mr Y are two of the four books I need to take with me when I’m travelling. Our Tragic Universe just became the fifth.
(less)

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May 03, 2011 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, great-reads, alltime-faves

This was a particularly odd but moreish book. Normally I really hate books where 'nothing seems to happen', and this could well be described in such a way. Its subtleties were clever and followed a theme in a particular direction, and there was character and plot development, so it wasn't as bad as say, 'Something Might Happen' by Julie Myerson where nothing did much happen. However, it wasn't as rollicking a read as her earlier book 'The End if Mr Y'. Still, I am happy to read 'Popco' at somepo...more

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Mar 22, 2013 Sally rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I'm giving this a 3 because I did like it. I enjoyed reading it, I found it compelling, I was eager to finish it. Which would usually mean a 4 or even a 5, but for now, at least, this is a 3.

Like 'The End of Mr Y' (which I also enjoyed) this book is brimming with ideas and some of them are a bit startling. There's also quite a discussion of literary tropes, their pitfalls and the idea of the 'storyless story'. Is this a storyless story? In some senses - there are story arcs that just stop half w...more

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Dec 04, 2012 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Lisa by: Jade

Shelves: 2012

After The End of Mr Y and now this, I'm becoming rather a fan of Scarlett Thomas. Always intelligent and original, reading and enjoying her books also has the additional bonus of making me feel quite clever at the time and (rather like Meg, this one's main character) I understand concepts I go cross-eyed over normally, even if I'll be buggered if I can explain them afterwards.

Set in a part of the world I'm very familiar with (in fact I passed Slapton's tank just this Saturday) and filled with i...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Dv rated it 3 of 5 stars

The End of Mr Y was good, there was a lot in Mr Y that I could forgive, but this book made me like it less as her writing process became all to clear. I did like it, but got an overwhelming, suffocating monologue of her writing process running underneath. The fact that she teaches fiction writing doesn't surprise me- I felt that it was almost a matter of 'and then I will use this technique but in a slightly different manner in order to do this...' Set pieces seem just that- set pieces to express...more

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About Scarlett Thomas

Scarlett Thomas has taught English Literature at the University of Kent since 2004, and has previously taught at Dartmouth Community College, South East Essex College and the University of East London. She reviews books for the Literary Review, the Independent on Sunday, and Scotland on Sunday. She has written seven novels, including The End of Mr. Y and PopCo.
In 2001 she was named by The Independ...more

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“One of the paradoxes of writing is that when you write non-fiction everyone tries to prove that it's wrong, and when you publish fiction, everyone tries to see the truth in it.” — 10 people liked it

“You tell them what a happy ending consists of, which is always individual success. You tell them that nothing irrational exists in this world, which is a lie. You tell them that conflict only exists only to be neatly resolved, and that everyone who is poor wants to be rich, and everyone who is ill wants to get better, and everyone who gets involved in crime comes to a bad end, and that love should be pure. You tell them that despite all this they are special, that the world revolves around them...” — 8 people liked it

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