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Summary
Summary
A rare meteorite struck Alex Woods when he was ten years old, leaving scars and marking him for an extraordinary future. The son of a fortune teller, bookish, and an easy target for bullies, Alex hasn't had the easiest childhood.
But when he meets curmudgeonly widower Mr. Peterson, he finds an unlikely friend. Someone who teaches him that that you only get one shot at life. That you have to make it count.
So when, aged seventeen, Alex is stopped at customs with 113 grams of marijuana, an urn full of ashes on the front seat, and an entire nation in uproar, he's fairly sure he's done the right thing . . .
Introducing a bright young voice destined to charm the world, The Universe Versus Alex Woods is a celebration of curious incidents, astronomy and astrology, the works of Kurt Vonnegut and the unexpected connections that form our world.
Author Notes
Gavin Extence was born in 1982 and grew up in the interestingly named village of Swineshead, England. From the ages of 5-11, he enjoyed a brief but illustrious career as a chess player, winning numerous national championships and travelling to Moscow and St. Petersburg to pit his wits against the finest young minds in Russia. He won only one game.
Gavin now lives in Sheffield with his wife, baby daughter and cat. He is currently working on his next novel. When he is not writing, he enjoys cooking, amateur astronomy and going to Alton Towers.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Seventeen-year-old Alex Woods was a household name even before authorities discovered 113g of marijuana and the ashes of an old man in the car he drove across the English border. At the age of 10 Alex became a national celebrity after being hit by a meteorite. In his teenage years he was most comfortable with adults like his doctors and Isaac Peterson, an irascible, reclusive, pot-smoking American widower who lives nearby in Alex's small village; Alex's only teenage friend is an emo goth girl named Ellie. Alex's naivete, bookishness, and oddness make him a target for bullies and his earnest response to one instance of abuse only solidifies his reputation. His mother's self-proclaimed powers of clairvoyance don't help Alex's rep, nor does the epilepsy he acquired after the accident. Peterson encourages Alex to read Vonnegut, prompting Alex to create a book club called the Secular Church of Kurt Vonnegut, giving Alex a leadership position that brings him the confidence he needs to help navigate his neighbor's lengthy illness, albeit with major missteps along the way. Extence's engaging coming-of-age debut skillfully balances light and dark, laughter and tears. Agent: Alice Howe, Hodder & Stoughton (U.K.). (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
A teenager drives off the ferry at Dover with an urn full of human ashes on the passenger seat and a bag of marijuana in the glove compartment. Stopped at customs, he turns up Handel's Messiah on the stereo to try to avert an epileptic seizure and is taken away by the police. This is the set-up for Gavin Extence's first novel, The Universe versus Alex Woods, and the rest of the book describes, in Alex's voice, how it came about. At 10, Alex, only son of a spiritualist shopkeeper who conceived him with a stranger somewhere near Stonehenge, is hit by a meteorite that hurtles through the roof of his home in Somerset and leaves him with a brain injury. Alex feels chosen, rather than damaged, by his fate. Among a lot of interesting information about astrophysics and neurology, which is one of the many strengths of Extence's book, is the fact that there is only one well-documented real-life case of a person being injured by a meteor: Mrs Annie Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama, in 1954. What Alex's personality was like before the meteor hit we don't know. Five years later, when he decides the time has come to take the iron-nickel fragment off his bookshelf and give it to the Natural History Museum, he reflects that "without the meteorite, I would have been an entirely different person. I'd have a different brain - different connections, different function." Alex is transfigured by his close encounter with outer space. Forced to stay off school until his fits can be controlled by a mixture of meditation and medication, he reads Tolkien, conducts a charming correspondence with a meteor expert and helps in his mother's shop. Rejoining the local secondary, he is bullied, but unharmed, by thugs who one day chase him into a neighbour's garden shed. The shed belongs to Mr Peterson, an American widower who smokes pot, loves Kurt Vonnegut and fought in Vietnam, and Alex's friendship with Peterson fills the remaining three-quarters of the book. They start a reading group, for which Alex's notice in the local library reads: "Ever wondered why we're here? Where we're going? What the point is? Concerned about the state of the universe in general?? THE SECULAR CHURCH OF KURT VONNEGUT: a book club." But these philosophical soirees (with flapjacks by Mrs Griffith) turn out to be only a brief respite from real-life dealings with mortality, for it soon transpires that The Universe versus Alex Woods is a book about assisted dying. The novel has many funny lines, with most of the comedy spun out of the contrast between Alex's precocity and his innocence. Lighting the candles for his mother's tarot readings, he says: "I probably added to the atmosphere, like some strange, mute goblin that would emerge now and then from the gloom to tend to the various flickering fires." But there are moments when you wonder if the novel is too winsome for its own good. Childless Mr Peterson fills the gap marked "father" in Alex's life rather too neatly, while neurologist Dr Enderby and physicist Dr Weir are like two good fairies dispensing pearls of advice on demand. "Not all scars are bad, Alex. Some are worth hanging on to, if you know what I mean," says Dr Weir at one point. Sometimes Alex is a smart alec: the chapter sending up his academy school and peer group reads like the revenge of the nerd. But the novel won me over. Extence tells a great story that owes much to Vonnegut, but also something to Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany. It's hard not to see an echo of Harry Potter, too, in the boy-hero with a scar on his head. The final section is humane and touching, and Extence deserves credit for the clever and timely idea of fictionalising a trip to the Swiss death clinic. Alex Woods is a secular hero, for whom adolescent awakening is more death than sex. For Alex, growing up means facing the laws of physics. At Cern, on his final journey with Mr Peterson, he thinks about "how old the universe was, and how old it would become before it suffered its final heat death - when all the stars had gone out and the black holes had evaporated and all the nucleons decayed, and nothing could exist but the elementary particles, drifting through the infinite darkness of space". Extence's hugely likable first novel is a fairytale for rationalists. To order The Universe versus Alex Woods for pounds 11.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop - Susanna Rustin The novel has many funny lines, with most of the comedy spun out of the contrast between [Alex]'s precocity and his innocence. Lighting the candles for his mother's tarot readings, he says: "I probably added to the atmosphere, like some strange, mute goblin that would emerge now and then from the gloom to tend to the various flickering fires." But there are moments when you wonder if the novel is too winsome for its own good. Childless Mr [Peterson] fills the gap marked "father" in Alex's life rather too neatly, while neurologist Dr Enderby and physicist Dr Weir are like two good fairies dispensing pearls of advice on demand. "Not all scars are bad, Alex. Some are worth hanging on to, if you know what I mean," says Dr Weir at one point. Sometimes Alex is a smart alec: the chapter sending up his academy school and peer group reads like the revenge of the nerd. - Susanna Rustin.
Library Journal Review
Most teens think the universe is against them at some point. Seventeen-year-old Alex Woods has plenty of evidence for his case: a tarot-reading witch for a mother, his father a one-night Solstice stand long since forgotten, a chunk of meteorite crashing through the roof and smashing into him, the onset of epileptic seizures, and school bullies eager to target him. Luckily for Alex, the meteorite and bullies have an upside. While the meteorite accident introduces him to two unusual doctors and the worlds of astrophysics and neurology, the school bullies chase him into a life-changing friendship with the semi-reclusive Mr. Peterson after Alex takes the blame for Mr. Peterson's broken greenhouse windows. Rather than revealing the bullies' names, Alex accepts a punishment of helping out the curmudgeonly widower. Neither is very happy about the arrangement until they bond over books and Alex founds the Secular Church of Kurt Vonnegut reading group. Over the course of a year, they also come to terms with a terminal diagnosis. Their plans for a simple trip to a Zurich clinic turn into a wild wheelchair ride through a hospital, an unexpected kiss, and international media attention. Not your average rite of passage but one Alex can ace. VERDICT A bittersweet, cross-audience charmer, this debut novel will appeal to guys, YA readers, and Vonnegut and coming-of-age fiction fans.-Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
