The Universe Verse Alex Woods -Gavin Extence

"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 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 …"

The Universe Versus Alex Woods starts off seeming like it's gonna be a quirky sort of book: the narration is matter of fact where it possibly shouldn't be, and the situation Alex is in on the opening pages is an interesting one. Unfortunately for everyone who picked it up on the basis of that, it's not really the kind of book it turned out to be. The quirky "buddy comedy" I was expecting turned out to be a stark talk on the realities and circumstances surrounding assisted suicides.

 I don't know that I'd call it funny -- it's not laugh out loud funny, anyway; more "wry smiles" funny -- and I don't know that I'd call it heart-breaking, either. The simplicity of the narrative voice kept it from being maudlin, from dwelling too much on any of the important details, which is what for me made them strike all the more forcefully.

It has been described as a coming of age story but I can't say it is though, because Alex is quite mature for his age already if a little naïve. 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 have met my best friend and similar questions. Which makes life so damn confusing and yet amazing. In a way, this book is a celebration of that.

I suppose people could easily compare this with Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and all those other books with introverted young men who are fascinated with math and sciences. Alex is introverted, but is it because he was struck by a meteor, became epileptic, held behind a grade, that he was isolated from his peers? Was Alex autistic? . In any case, I found I liked Alex because he was such a nerd and didn't compromise his principles to be accepted. I also liked that he was thoughtful and yet sensitive.
It is written in an slightly odd way, it starts at the end, goes to the beginning and skips around a bit, but by about 1/4 way through, you are hooked and everything makes sense, things start clicking into place like magnets and you are rolling down the reader track eagerly anticipating every event as it unfolds. At it's most basic, it sounds like a typical boy/man bonding story that's been done a hundred times, but it has surprising twists and a modern slant.

Age Rating 15+. There is marijuana cultivation and smoking and a lot of existential talks surrounding the assisted suicide of Mr Peterson.