Everything Matters! (Ron Currie, Jr)

I guess the title says it all. Everything Matters! Sometimes you wonder, though, does it really?

This book, a hint of sci-fi with it's dystopian undertones is telling the story of one man who is forced to deal with the weight of dealing and choosing what to do knowning from birth that the world was going to end? In his lifetime to boot. Except even though that basicaly sums up the story, what makes it a good read is that it has lots of other threads going on that keep you forgetting what you're dealing with the destruction of the entire world.

Junior, our protagonist is a gifted guy who hears voices that have proven to him that he's not crazy, and he is able to know things that you wouldn't ordinarily know. He has a working class father who he adores and an alcoholic mother who kind of hovers in the background. He has a brother who developed a drug problem but since that problem of sniffing coke went on so long during rehab he ended up with a brain injury that more or less changed his personality to borderline numbskull with a talent for baseball.

The prophecy for Junior is that a meteor/comet thing is coming toward Earth and will hit on a specific date and time during Junior's 36th year. He has to live with this truth and live his life. Naturally he turns to alcohol and drugs and goes on a few adventures while he suffers losing his girlfriend when he tried to tell her what he knows and she thinks he's nuts and morbid (wouldn't u be?), and ends up leaving him to go to college on the other side of the country. Junior loves her painfully and it's not ruining the story to tell you that they do get back together and a ton of other stuff happens that kept me engaged in the story.

I was surprised at how good this book was. I was shelving books and as is my habit to thumb through titles that catch my eye and this one literally called out to me. ANd unlike others that call out to me, this was wasn't just flipped through and cast aside. I'm glad I read it. It was a very interesting concept, one that I do think about even though it's kind of depressing; the meaning of life and all that.
The ending isn't surprising but necessary and I recommend this is you're looking for something different and amusing and somewhat thought provoking.