Singular ... The ride could not be more rewarding; Parsons’s transgressive boldness allows us to feel the soul in places that moderation simply cannot reach ... Discursive modules open up context and click the kaleidoscopic lens of perspective, deepening and expanding everything we thought we knew ... Though the book’s end brings a curtain-drop twist that is the plot-based equivalent of sudden mescaline clarity and awe, equally moving are the moments of joy found in the imagined interiority of Kit’s own fantasies.
The novel’s structure — present-day scenes that alternate with extensive flashbacks — proves to be a brilliant choice. The back and forth can be destabilizing, which is the point: It echoes the specific language of grief, the constant distractions, memories that pop up unbidden, a special kind of emotional torment that never really goes away ... A stunning novel, filled with compassion and an understanding of what it means to be a person in the world who wants — needs — to withdraw, but for too many reasons to count, can’t ... Beautiful.
Parson’s captivating novel is wholly alert to the untidiness of life, and Kit’s stream of thought is sensationally alive, a heart-wrenching foray into the complexity of loss and identity.
Funny, glittering… Light is everywhere in We Were the Universe… In Parsons’s work, it crackles, adds texture, illuminates a kind of sticky darkness. It serves, rather than distracts…. It left me with a feeling of wonder at the ways in which we, as humans, are linked to one another, the way we burn through all kinds of darkness like stars smoldering in the night, how some people really are always touching, no matter where they are.
A heartrendingly sad and gut-bustingly hilarious novel that gets at the galactic nature of grief... We Were the Universe eschews the conventional grief novel in its horniness, the conventional motherhood novel in its queerness, and even the conventional sex novel in its emphasis on fantasy over reality.
“We Were the Universe, immerses readers in the kaleidoscopic psyche of Kit, a woman in her mid-20s, as she navigates parenting her unruly three-year-old daughter while mourning the death of her younger sister, Julie…Much of We Were the Universe reads like the transcript of a raunchy standup comedy show — if the comedian was a modern-day Edna Pontellier of The Awakening or Nora Helmer of A Doll’s House.”
