While I didn’t love the story, I do think Extence is quite a gifted writer, and I will keep an eye out for his future works. Maybe the book was just too close for comfort for me. I can’t even imagine how horrendous it was for him. By the end, my father could no longer communicate at all, and for a man who made his living talking, this was unbearable for everyone around him to see. My father had Parkinsons and suffered for many years - and Parkinsons is not unlike the disease that afflicts Mr Peterson. Maybe my issues with the book are personal. It became something that I would put down and then look at and say “ugh, I really need to finish that”. But still, I didn’t really enjoy the book. Details of how Alex was a bit of an odd-ball, yet didn’t seem to mind all that much, were great. The depiction of small-town British life was a delight. And I actually found this part of the book a bit more interesting, but I still didn’t love it for some reason. How friends can actually be family, if you let them. It becomes more about the depths of friendship and standing up for what you think is right, no matter what. In the second half of the book, the story detours quite a bit. And so the first half of the book passes, fairly pleasantly. Until he meets elderly Mr Peterson, the surly American in their small English town. Alex and Mr Peterson become friends, bonding over classical music, pacifism, and Kurt Vonnegut.

He doesn’t know who his father is, and has very few other friends.

His mother is a bit of a kook - she owns the local tarot shop and is a bit of a hippy. He develops (and learns to manage) epilepsy, and befriends the doctors and scientists who he comes in contact with. He’s a bit of a strange boy, and this certainly doesn’t make him any less strange. Then we get some backstory: Alex Woods gets hit in the head with an meteorite as a young boy. In the very first pages, a bald, 17 year old named Alex Woods is detained at customs in Dover in a car with a large bag of marijuana and the ashes of someone called Mr Peterson. And yes, there was a ton of humor and the writing was wonderful. I’ve read nothing but stellar reviews, praising the humor and the writing.

The universe versus alex woods