Our Tragic Universe [Paperback]

There are lots of peculiar goings-on happening around Dartmouth. There may (or may not) be a large beast prowling the moors; a ship in a bottle which is washed ashore may (or may not) hold a significant meaning for the story's main character Meg; we may (or may not) all already be dead and living in some sort of eternal computer-generated afterlife and we may (or may not) be able to piece together meaningful thoughts on the nature of life via the study and practice of knitting, writing, loving, dog walking and reading Anna Karenina.

I guess you could say of any novel ever written that it is 'not for everyone', but I think that's true of 'Our Tragic Universe' in a deeper fashion than it is for just about any other book I've ever read. Personally I loved it - I loved the way the narrative bounced between esoteric ideas such as the Cottingley Fairies that so haunted Conan Doyle one minute and then the meaning of Tarot cards the next; all interspersed with thoughts on the difficult nature of human relationships, the importance of friends and the desire to find your own place in the universe.

One of the key themes of the novel is that stories don't have to have a narrative, they don't need to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Since many aspects of life dribble vaguely onwards towards no readily discernable goal why should a novel be burdened with the need to tell a story? In the course of Thomas's book characters ponder the troubled nature of relationships - wishing they were with someone other than their current partner but knowing the object of their desire almost certainly has feet of clay; discuss fascinating ideas about story-telling, myth, the nature of reality and the nature of magic and generally move forwards in their lives at the snail's pace which is all most of us ever manage. Reaching a destination isn't always the goal, sometimes making sure you enjoy the ride is all that matters: finding happiness in the moment is perhaps more worthwhile, not to say more realistic, than planning ahead for that brilliant career or that beautiful house.

I hope I'm not making any of this sound drearily weighty. Our Tragic Universe has a very light step and, while you're never quite sure where it's heading, it never loses its sense of passion about life, ideas and love. Also Thomas has a gift for carrying the reader along - her prose is so smooth you find yourself reading 'just one more page' over and over again until a dozen or more have flown past. It's curious, and a touch eccentric, but it is an absolute joy to read and it'll stay in your mind for weeks afterwards. Forget the destination, that doesn't matter, just sit back and enjoy the journey.

This is a difficult book for me to review. I have no idea what the point of it all was or what it was really about. All I can say is that I did find it a compelling read. When I started it I wasn't sure if I would continue reading it. 100 pages in and I felt that nothing had really happened. But then I found myself being drawn into the story of Meg Carpenter, a writer of genre fiction, and a would-be writer of literary novels. She's a likeable character, stuck in a relationship with Christopher, who finds fault with everything she does. There are some moments early on in the book where I got quite excited about what might be about to happen, and I did feel that those moments weren't followed through. I think I was waiting for a real wow moment to come out of them.

I can't put my finger on why I liked this book as much as I did. I think it's all down to the author's writing style, her sympathetic heroine and an intriguing, if unfathomable story, which did keep me interested throughout, despite the philosophical parts that didn't mean a great deal to me.

A worthy follow up to The End of Mr Y in my opinion. I'll definitely read more of Scarlett Thomas's work.

Our Tragic Universe - Scarlett Thomas

`This, for me, is a key feature of storylessness: all structures must contain the possibility of their own non-existence - some zip that undoes them.' She smiled. `The storyless story is a vagina with teeth'

While the above quote may seem an odd one without context, it is I can assure you, as odd with. Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas (Author of The End of Mr Y, a book I loved) feels like an extension of the only scenes in Mr Y that I was less fond of. It covers a month or so in the life of Meg, an author who teaches (as opposed to the lecturer who writes from Mr Y) who's only achievement is as a reasonably successful ghost writer for the fictional Zeb Ross and as the writer of a series of (now cancelled) low brow science fiction novels, struggling, as she has for years, to write her "Novel". We see her simultaneously realise she has fallen out of love with one immature man, and fall for another 20 years her senior.

While I found myself quickly drawn to Meg I also found the similarities to Ariel Manto from Mr Y very striking, the writers/teachers attitude, the attraction to older men and the unending navel gazing. I recently discovered that, in her creative writing lectures, Ms. Thomas is a proponent of write what you know, l could easily have guessed this without this insider knowledge. The End of Mr Y could act as a guide book to the University of Kent campus, and I have no doubt that I could do a decent job of finding my way around this part of Devonshire after reading this book.

Whether intentionally or ironically if feels like this novel may in fact be Meg's great "novel".She has the authors ability to find hobbies and feel the need to shoe horn them in to her writing, and spends a lot of the book considering how she can turn her real life in to fiction. Really the novel is just a shell for a series of dinner party conversations, seemingly about what ever topic had been interesting the author at the time of writing, covering such disparate topics as the storyless story, knitting, vegan-ism/cannibalism, alternative/holistic medicine, physics, chemistry and the nature of the universe. I think my main problem with the book is that I found the shell so well written that I wanted more, while Meg is not necessarily the most likable protagonist she is compelling and when ever the plot really seemed to get going, suddenly we're in another dinner party and I found myself really having to put, what felt like a physical effort, in to getting through them to the next nugget of that ever illusive plot.

It is fundamentally a novel written for its characters, these are people with no real conflict (and tellingly no offspring) none of whom are anything more than aged children who never stopped being students and joined the real world. Novel's can be great media for presenting ideas, as discussed in the book itself when the Meg suggests that another character turn his theory of the nature of the universe in to fiction as;

`One of the paradoxes of writing is that when your writing non-fiction everyone tries to prove your wrong, and when you publish fiction, everyone tries to see the truth in it.'

Ironically Thomas herself completely fails at this, she presents these ideas almost rote from real sources with little interpretation from the characters, leaving one to think, why don't I just go read that instead.

It's not a bad novel by any means, it is however a disappointment, The End of Mr Y left me wanting more, and so, I was excited to read Our Tragic Universe, but it only left me wanting more of the plot and none of the navel gazing chinwaggery. I will go back and read Pop Co. (Published before Mr Y but recently reissued in nice matching cover) I hope to find a different character and a bit more plot but I won't be surprised if I'm disappointed.

Vic