The Observable Universe, Heather McCalden
The Observable Universe, Heather McCalden
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The Observable Universe
An Investigation

Author: Heather McCalden

Narrator: Heather McCalden

Unabridged: 9 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/19/2024

Synopsis

Is anyone ever truly lost in the internet age? A moving, original memoir of a young woman reckoning with her parents’ absence, the virus that took them, and what it means to search for meaning in a hyperconnected world.

“Brilliantly innovative . . . syncing a narrative of profoundly personal emotion with the invention and evolution of today’s cyberspace.”—William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and The Peripheral

In the early 1990s, Heather McCalden lost both her parents to AIDS. She was seven when her father died, ten when she lost her mother. Raised by her grandmother, Nivia, she grew up in Los Angeles, also known as ground zero for the virus and its destruction.

Years later, she begins researching online the history of HIV as a way to deal with her loss, which leads her to the unexpected realization that the AIDS crisis and the internet developed on parallel timelines. By accumulating whatever fragments she could about both phenomena—images, anecdotes, and scientific entries—alongside her own personal history, McCalden forms a synaptic journey of what happened to her family, one that leads to an equally unexpected discovery about who her parents might have been.

Entwining this personal search with a wider cultural narrative of what the virus and virality mean in our times—interrogating what it means to “go viral” in an era of explosive biochemical and virtual contagion—The Observable Universe is at once a history of our viral culture and a prismatic account of grief in the internet age.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Constantine

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ Genre: Nonfiction The Observable Universe is a melancholic and poignant memoir that explores the evolution of the AIDS virus and the internet in parallel timelines. In the early 1990s, the author suffered the loss of her parents to AIDS and became an orphan at the age of ten. Her grandmoth......more

Goodreads review by A.M. Flynn🪐

3.5 ⭐......more

Goodreads review by Liviu

There are some books that one really enjoys without a clear reason. Some books we enjoy because we read them at the proper moment, which could find us completely different from what we could be some months later. And even though the structure gave me initially the feeling that I would struggle a bit......more

Goodreads review by Rachel Louise

4.5 stars. This was a truly amazing book and I loved every second of it. McCalden’s parents died of AIDS when she was very young - her father when she was seven and her mother when she was ten. This book is the product of wanting to know who her parents were, what the virus is that caused her so muc......more

Quotes

“Heartfelt . . . interweaves meditations on personal loss with deep dives into internet culture and the AIDS epidemic, providing an innovative reflection on the elusive nature of grief.”—Booklist

“A debut memoir like nothing you’ve ever read before . . . Part a reflection on HIV (the disease that killed McCalden’s parents when she was in grade school) and part commentary on the rise of the internet, this has nothing less on its mind than the task of learning how to live. ‘To survive loss you, like the virus, must “go on,”’ McCalden writes. Personally, we’d follow her anyway.”—Oprah Daily

“Fans of experimental form will find much to admire here.”—Kirkus Reviews

“[A] singular debut . . . movingly illustrates the fragmentary experience of grief.”—Publishers Weekly

“A dazzling, kaleidoscopic work of art . . . a book that is very much a survival guide for this era . . . takes your breath away.”—Brit Marling, award-winning actress, co-creator of Netflix’s The OA and FX’s A Murder at the End of the World

“Strands of obsession, contagion, and radical inquiry braid together into lyrical meaning without ever settling into moralistic conclusions or assessments. This book is explosive and profound, unusual and timeless.”—Cyrus Dunham, author of A Year Without a Name

“A masterful debut—a work of confident craft, razor wire wit, and unflinching courage.”—Jordan Kisner

“Bodies and technologies, selves and societies, histories and futures, memories and speculations—McCalden reaches far and wide, and brings it all home.”—Elvia Wilk, author of Death by Landscape

“What does it mean to lose two parents to AIDS, to inherit a load of heartbreak? Beautifully researched and achingly tender, The Observable Universe filled me with awe.”—Kyo Maclear, author of Unearthing

“An astonishing parsing of the fragments that make up that seamless whole we call a self . . . McCalden has given us a sparkling, spacious debut.”—Sarah Krasnostein, author of The Trauma Cleaner and The Believer

“An extraordinarily intimate record of grief in connected times, The Observable Universe is poetic and precise, tracing the spiraling connections but also the empty spaces, the mysteries, and the emotional complexities that the past leaves behind.”—Roisin Kiberd, author of The Disconnect: A Personal Journey Through the Internet

“It isn’t pain itself that inspires great art; it’s the frenzied avoidance of pain that pushes an artist to do something, anything, other than feel pain. This book is what arises from that practice: the artifact of one writer’s solitary, complicated grief.”—Sarah Manguso, author of 300 Arguments and Very Cold People

“Part meditation on loss, AIDS, and viral transmission, part howl of grief and fury, The Observable Universe spells out the transformative power of the internet better than anything else I’ve read.”—Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being

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