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.

In the Orient, a long time ago, Taoist and Zen monks used to tell stories that would illustrate the multi-faceted nature of our existence; simple tales that could be interpreted in many ways, and that would reveal more upon further reflection. Nowadays, some people find them very frustrating, because at times they can seem to offer very little reward to the listener - or the reader. These are Zen tales, and Scarlett Thomas refers to them very often in her new book.

Here's an example:

"The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there. In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly. Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?" *

This story, one of the less cryptic ones, provokes less frustration than most from readers. Some people see it as mere philosophical babble, others that he was reflecting upon how we interpret our reality, and the way that time is experienced - if butterflies live for only a short time, then how can the span of our lives fit into a dream it has?

The point of the story is to offer an object to meditate upon,, rather than a simple narrative to listen to.

Many people will find 'Our Tragic Universe' similarly frustrating, because it has a very different subject to her previous book, which was, to me, about science (which by it's very nature categorises everything). Here, she categorises very little, but leaves things to the reader to decide. Instead of science, she explores the world of mysteries and alternatives to the norm - faeries, tarot cards, cosmic ordering, zen tales.

I planned to do a really detailed review when I was reading this book; every time something that struck me as important was referred to or mentioned, I'd pop in a Post-It note and carry on going. But Amazon simple don't allow enough space for what I'd wanted to write.

'The End of Mystery/Mr. Y' and 'Our Tragic Universe' are like siblings who see the world very differently: one has a tight narrative structure where the plot leaps forward, the other seems at times to consist merely of a writer writing about a writer who has a writer's block; One is set in the Victorian era, a time of scientific discovery and belief in the utterances that scientists made - the other is set in the present time, where people are starting to doubt the certainties that were once taken for granted; One has an ending where all the answers are provided (although the editor didn't want it to end that way and I agree) - the other could be seen to have hardly an ending at all.

Scarlett's new novel makes many different points to reflect upon - at one stage, she suggests that Western traditional tales - with the knight, the princess, the dragon, the gold for example - are all about overcoming a hurdle to win sex and money. It's quite a limiting narrative. The suggestion is that a lot of us here see our own lives in a similar narrative type, whereas perhaps we should perceive our lives in many different ways; the simplest being the pleasure of experiencing things as they happen - being in the moment. Escaping the narrative. We as readers spend so much time anticipating what might happen next - why not enjoy the process of reading for what it is, instead?

It'll make you work if you feel you have to. It'll make you hate it if you expect a beginning, middle and end. Read it as the Zen tale above, have no expectations, enjoy the experience of being in the vivid world that Scarlett conjurs up - is it the world we live in, or not?

*Thanks to John Suler for the Zen tale