Local legend Ron Currie, Jr. will be here for the release of his second book, a novel called Everything Matters!.

In Currie’s first book, God is killed when He comes to Earth in the form of a Dinka refugee, and the rest of the world is forced to suffer the reverberations from God’s untimely demise. In his new novel, Everything Matters!, the world is faced with its own cataclysmic end.

As an infant, Junior Thibodeaux is presented with some unfortunate news: a comet is going to annihilate all life on Earth in thirty-six years. He alone carries the burden of this secret, and, given the pending doom, wrestles with a new-found existential dilemma: Does anything he does matter?

Despite the inauspicious beginning, Everything Matters! “is gleefully free-spirited,” and Currie’s “thoughts on cosmic doom somehow take the form of a joyride,” says Janet Maslin in The New York Times. She continues: “Mr. Currie is a startlingly talented writer… He survives the inevitable, apt comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut and writes in a tenderly mordant voice all his own. He seems equipped to succeed at almost anything…”

Currie’s first book, a collection of linked stories called God is Dead, was awarded the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award in 2008. In a starred review, Kirkus called the debut work, “Abrasively funny… inventive and absorbing… Kurt Vonnegut laced with Louis-Ferdinand Celine.”

Everything Matters! was published on June 25th, and Ron Currie, Jr. will be at the store for a reading on July 9th at 7 pm to celebrate his new book.

"Throughout the story there is the sheer delight of Mr. Currie’s fresh, joltingly funny imagery… The excitement that drives the reader from page to page is… about seeing what Mr. Currie will try next."
--Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"Everything Matters! is staggeringly ambitious and pulls off nearly everything it sets out to do."
--Jim Shepard, author of Like You'd Understand, Anyway and Love and Hydrogen

"If you're going to write about Doom you'd better be funny and if you're going to write about Global Doom you'd better be damn funny. Currie accomplishes one of the rarest feats in literature-- he makes you dread turning each page at the same time you can't help turning each page. He leads you toward The End with wisdom and honesty, pointing out the beautiful sights along the way but never shielding your eyes from the fires ahead."
--David Benioff, author of City of Thieves and The 25th Hour

Ron Currie, Jr. was born and raised in Waterville, Maine, where he still lives. His first book, God is Dead, won numerous awards including the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His debut novel, Everything Matters!, is a July IndieNext Pick, and will be translated into a dozen languages. For more information about Ron and his work, visit his website at www.roncurriejr.net.