Our Tragic Universe
By Scarlett Thomas
Summary
"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, koans (and riddles and jokes), new-age theories of everything, narrative theory, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, and knitting patterns, Meg wends her way through "Our Tragic Universe," asking this and many other questions. Does she believe in fairies? In magic? Is she a superbeing? Is she living a storyless story? And what's the connection between her off-hand suggestion to push a car into a river, a ship in a bottle, a mysterious beast loose on the moor, and the controversial author of "The Science of Living Forever"?
Smart, entrancing, and boiling over with Thomas's trademark big ideas, "Our Tragic Universe" is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, how we can rewrite our futures (if not our histories), and how stories just might save our lives."
-Goodreads.com
Quotations
“I realized that when someone plays hard to get, they are making themselves into a character in a story, and they chose the story that leads to the outcome they want. If a woman puts a dragon between herself and the hero, it becomes an obstacle to be overcome. If she goes and knocks on his door and says ‘fancy a bunk up?’ she becomes a slut: basically a conquest with no obstacles and therefore no value. It was like people wanted to put everything in a story because otherwise it wouldn't make any sense"
“I looked at the cards in front of me again and imagined Vi saying that the one true female card was the Fool: the card of the void, of nothingness, of primal darkness and the beginnings of everything else."
“I looked at the cards in front of me again and imagined Vi saying that the one true female card was the Fool: the card of the void, of nothingness, of primal darkness and the beginnings of everything else."