Book info

• Title The Universe Versus Alex Woods
• Author Gavin Extence
• Year 2013
• Genre Young Adult

Alex Woods knows that he hasn't had the most conventional start in life. He knows that growing up with a clairvoyant single mother won't endear him to the local bullies. He also knows that even the most improbable events can happen - he's got the scars to prove it. What he doesn't know yet is that when he meets ill-tempered, reclusive widower Mr Peterson, he'll make an unlikely friend. Someone who tells him that you only get one shot at life. That you have to make the best possible choices. So when, aged seventeen, Alex is stopped at Dover customs with 113 grams of marijuana, an urn full of ashes on the passenger seat, and an entire nation in uproar, he's fairly sure he's done the right thing.

Thoughts

I had no idea what to expect going into this book and was drawn in immediately. The way it’s told, as though you’re just having a conversation with Alex himself as he reminisces, allows the information to be drip-fed, not always in chronological order

About halfway through, you sort of get a sense where the story is going but it’s still a shock when it takes that turn. I thought it was a really brave book, ripping open a layer of society that people just don’t want to talk about.

It was intensely detailed, too, from the shape and size of all the buildings, to the precise wording of conversations with receptionists, and yet it’s never boring. You’re just always waiting to see what’s next and where that step will lead. Great stuff.

Rating: 4 / 5