Vielleicht startet genau dann endlich die Geschichte rund um ein sehr wichtiges und interessantes Thema (ich spoiler hier nicht, habe mich aber aktiv spoilern lassen), doch ich hatte einfach keinen Nerv mehr auf Alex. Das ist schade, denn Mr. Peterson hätte ich gern näher kennengelernt. In English author Gavin Extence’s debut novel, The Universe Versus Alex Woods, the titular teenage protagonist embarks on a geeky and surreal journey after forging an unlikely friendship with a marijuana-addled Vietnam veteran. Many critics have compared the book to the works of Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Haddon. Alex’s voice is very hard to sum up. His epilepsy caused him to miss a large portion of secondary school and as a result he is very awkward socially, a misfit, pretty geeky (and not in a good way). He doesn’t really get euphemisms or sarcasm and seems a little naive for his years, but despite this (or maybe because of it) at times he just seems to cut through to the truth of things. The chapter where Alex explains misuse of the word ‘gay’ is hands-down the funniest thing I read all year. The Universe vs Alex Woods tells the story of Alex who, as a ten year old, was hit on the head by a tiny meteorite. This fantastically improbable accident lead to Alex developing epilepsy, missing a whole chunk of school and becoming kind of an oddball. Whilst running away from the school bullies one day, Alex meets Mr Peterson, a curmudgeonly Vietnam veteran. They bond over a mutual love of Kurt Vonnegut and become unlikely friends.

The friendship between Alex and Mr. Peterson is very much like that of Russell and Carl in Up: a young boy befriends a grouchy old man who lost his wife, and eventually the two begin to consider each other as a family of sorts. I loved watching this friendship grow and develop. Though it was filled with difficulties, the influence that this friendship had on both parties was quite powerful - especially towards the end where it is shown just how much they are willing to do for each other. At the beginning of the novel, Alex is a boy, but with Mr. Peterson's help, he becomes a man with a heightened sense of integrity and a new outlook on life. urn:lcp:universeversusal0000exte_k4z0:epub:fab24bb8-a52e-4644-b107-5cf04a86cfe7 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier universeversusal0000exte_k4z0 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3qw5p64w Invoice 1652 Isbn 9780316246576 The protagonist, Alex, is a logical, naive, introverted young man with a compelling, authentic voice. There is a lot of social disconnect between him and his peers, due to the fact that he enjoys learning, voices his opinions - regardless of their appropriateness - and tends to go off on many tangents. As a biology student, I found all of the detailed information that Alex provided in regards to his scientific learning to be very interesting (which, from what I've seen, places me in the minority on that count). It is hard not to empathize with Alex, whose childlike innocence and unique worldview make him quite easy to like. Much of the wit of The Universe Versus Alex Woods derives from our protagonist’s deadpan narrative voice. Both logical and naive, Alex is inadvertently funny and, like the narrator of Mark Haddon’s A Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-Time, needs to explain everything in great detail. Appalled to think that his handshake might have been on the limp side when meeting the curator of the National History Museum, Alex grips him tightly on departing, so as not to “leave any doubt that the morning’s handshake had been an anomaly”. Likewise, it’s impossible to keep a straight face when he describes a conversation with an irritable Swiss hotel clerk in which Alex insists on speaking in his newly acquired German — “His slightly edgy disposition I put down to my over-zealous war-film accent.” Beneath this humour, though, lies unexpected emotional depth. So fluently entertaining and unflinching is Extence’s writing that it almost comes as a surprise to realise how moving Alex’s story really is.What a sweet book. It's about a boy from a small town in England who is odd and a loner, but also very smart and likeable. He rather reminds me of the autistic kid in Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend - or the main character of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - but more social and less autistic - but he seems like he's on the spectrum or at least a kid with some quirks. Toward the middle of the book, I start seeing similarities to John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. BTW, if you have not read any of the three books I just mentioned, add them to your pile as they are 4-5 star books. The other characters (except for the bullies) are also easy to care about. I also liked that it incorporated Kurt Vonnegut and how fitting his novels are to Alex and Mr Peterson's lives. And of course, the classical music. If a book makes you want to learn more about stuff, and makes you want to go read all of Kurt Vonnegut's books, then it can't be all bad. 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.

An introverted bookworm epileptic who loves learning about math, physics, astronomy, and who openly admits that his hobbies are definitely "gay" (in the high school context) What Extence gets absolutely right in this book is the mixture of naivety with sincerity with a clear sense of irony. It doesn't have the level of absurdity of Vonnegut but that's not the point of this book, so don't expect any Tralfamadorians.

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It is the story of an unlikely friendship, that's definitely true, and it's a beautiful story from my point of view. It's fairly apparent from the first chapter, to me, what exactly is going on here: what matters is how we get there, and how much less funny/quirky it seems by the end, and how much more sad and true and beautiful. But if you don't want to know, don't read any further in this review. Though this may now sound like a depressing book, it really is more 'life-affirming', due to the style with which it is approached, and the inclusion of Alex's other anecdotes, like his relationship with older teen rebel, Ellie. I would recommend it to anyone over the age of 13, as euthanasia itself is an extremely important moral subject, though here is approached in an accessible and occasionally entertaining way, such as their adventurous break out from the hospital. The novel does not simply preach about the morality of euthanasia (even though the reader is encouraged to make their own judgement as Alex himself does), but is also an enjoyable read for the quirky characters and their interactions with each other. Lccn 2012277741 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-10-g1236 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA15317 Openlibrary_edition I can't say this is a coming-of-age story, though, because Alex is pretty much mature for his age already. Instead, this is a story about how little incidents in our lives influence events in the future. You will have to ask yourself, if these series of incidents didn't happen to Alex, would his life have been different? If I had chosen to take the bus instead of walking, would I be with my boyfriend right now? And similar questions, which makes life so damn confusing and yet amazing. In a way, this book is a celebration of that. The primary moral prism through which Woods views his current dilemma is the writing of his favorite author, Kurt Vonnegut. Woods starts a Vonnegut fan club for people interested in “morality, ecology, time travel, extraterrestrial life, twentieth-century history, humanism, humor, et cetera,” after reading Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, and Breakfast of Champions. He calls it, "The Secular Church of Kurt Vonnegut."

Alex himself is growing and rising to the task that Peterson puts him to - it’s a very remarkable literary journey. It's also about a gruff solitary old man, also smart and sweet on the inside - and how they meet and their relationship as it evolves and what it means to the both of them. Other characters who make an appearance are the boy's mother, a beloved dog, an older sister type figure (friend) from school and other minor characters such as kids at school, some bullies, some not, neighbors, etc.And, if you're reading this review, then you probably already know what I didn't know -- that this book centers around Vonnegut, and devotes a significant part of the book to Slaughterhouse-Five. This was a very sweet coming of age novel. I enjoyed learning about meteors, tarot cards, epilepsy and Vonnegut. If you enjoyed The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I highly recommend this. My critisism is that I found Alex to be a bit one-dimensional. I realize that at sixteen you are mostly an innocent, but I prefer characters with some flaws. The only thing I can really criticize about it is that sometimes Alex would be narrating too much, like detailed descriptions of what seizures are, the asteroid belt, etc. I found the dialogues are much more strongly written, and a more effective way of propelling the story forward, rather than plainly Alex telling us what he thought or learned. Aside from that, I really liked the book.

Perfectly crafted and beautifully written... The Universe Versus Alex Woods may be a debut novel but it is an outstanding novel by any standards. Unforgettable." - Red (UK) Reading Alex Woods was enjoyable and thought-provoking (there's one major moral dilemma delved into here). And I love books that make me think. It makes that book stay with you for a while longer. The ultimate moral dilemma here, of course, is do we really have the right to our death? Assisted Suicide was new to me, but I found that it was not appalling at all. This part of the story was handled really well by the author. As a nurse, I've seen too many patients who suffered unnecessarily, sometimes because the family decides for them, or the elderly were too weak to decide for themselves. The only thing to do for them is to give them a dignified death. Since this was my first NetGalley ARC, I didn't know it had an expiration date, so I chose one of the ARCs I received and read it. I found I did not want to put it down. As a result of the meteorite injury, Woods becomes epileptic, given to suffering seizures. He also has a large scar on his head. Around the neighborhood, he is known as "the boy who lived" or "the boy who survived." The characters are all incredibly well-developed, and their struggles and triumphs feel real and relatable. I found myself rooting for Alex and his unlikely friendship with Mr. Peterson, an elderly man with a passion for Kurt Vonnegut and a terminal illness. Their bond is both heartwarming and heartbreaking, and their conversations about life, death, and the universe are both thought-provoking and poignant. The unlikely friendship between those two was brilliantly portrayed: The elderly Peterson, smoking weed against his chronic pain, who only hesitatingly and grudgingly opens up to Alex to, eventually, putting the ultimate trust in him. Pariah Town. a pariah is someone who's excluded from mainstream society. And if you know that at twelve years of age, you're probably an inhabitant of Pariah Town.”The Universe Versus Alex Woods is the kind of book that makes you think, compels you to reevaluate your beliefs and the lengths you're willing to take for a friend. Alex becomes friends with the 'odd' Mr Peterson after running into his garden to escape bullies, but their relationship soon grows, even including an obscure book group which Alex holds in his house named "THE SECULAR CHURCH OF KURT VONNEGUT". This in itself is another good quality of the novel, as it encourages the reader to read his books, as well as being interesting due to the science fiction elements discussed. In life, there are no true beginnings or endings. Events flow into each other, and the more you try to isolate them in a container, the more they spill over the sides, like canal-water breaching its artificial banks. Extence's engaging coming-of-age debut skillfully balances light and dark, laughter and tears." - Publishers Weekly