Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Everything Happens Today: A Novel
    Everything Happens Today: A Novel
    Everything Happens Today: A Novel
    Ebook243 pages

    Everything Happens Today: A Novel

    By Jesse Browner

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “A stupendous, thought-provoking, devilishly delicious novel that reads like Zen koan meets Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . . . Highly recommended” (Library Journal, starred review).

    Everything Happens Today records a single day in the life of Wes, a seventeen-year-old who attends Manhattan’s elite Dalton School and lives in Greenwich Village in a dilapidated town house with his terminally ill mother, distant father, and beloved younger sister. In the course of one day everything will happen to Wes: he will lose his virginity to the wrong girl and break his own heart, try to meet a Monday morning deadline for a paper on War and Peace, and prepare an elaborate supper he hopes will reunite his family. Wes struggles through the day deep in thoughts of sex, love, Beatles lyrics, friendship, God, and French cuisine—a typical teenager with an atypical mind, a memorable young man who comes to the poignant understanding of how fragile but attainable personal happiness can be.

    “A deeply compassionate novel by a very fine writer.” —Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateSep 27, 2011
    ISBN9781609459000
    Everything Happens Today: A Novel
    Author

    Jesse Browner

    Jesse Browner is a writer and translator who lives in New York. He is the author of the novels Conglomeros (1992) and Turnaway (1996), and of The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down, a widely praised history of hospitality in Western civilization. He has been a contributor to the New York Times Book Review, Food and Wine magazine, Nest magazine, New York magazine, and others.

    Read more from Jesse Browner

    Related to Everything Happens Today

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    • Article

      Self-portraits

      May 5, 2021

      I’M having my portrait painted. I can give you several excellent objective reasons for this. A painting of my wife executed some years ago seems lonely without a pair to it, we agree; her words, not mine. Other generations of our family hang around t

      2 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2022

      This is the time of year when stormsspin up from distant dustand sand and make their way to us,and we worry and adjust the scales we carry in our headsto account for luck and prayer.We buy batteries and candles, cordsand water to prepare. There are t

      5 min read

    • Article

      The William Trevor Reader: “On the Zattere”

      Mar 14, 2023

      I’m truly undecided on whether Trevor succeeds with this story.  The post The William Trevor Reader: “On the Zattere” appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Inherited Imagination

      Aug 18, 2020

      The Inherited Imagination
      9 min read

    • Article

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work

      Dec 15, 2018

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work
      6 min read

    • Article

      On Proprioception, the Sixth Sense of Storytelling

      Sep 30, 2022

      Proprioception is a realm in which two specific craft aspects—character and setting—are wed. The post On Proprioception, the Sixth Sense of Storytelling appeared first on The Millions.

      15 min read

    • Article

      The Bird That Sang I Am

      Sep 1, 2021

      The Bird That Sang I Am
      19 min read

    • Article

      The Glove

      Mar 4, 2024

      The Glove
      8 min read

    • Article

      Sharon Olds, America’s Brave Poet of the Body

      Mar 8, 2017

      Sharon Olds can still remember how furious editors became when she started submitting her poems, 40 years ago. “They came back often with very angry notes,” the 74-year-old poet says, sitting in her small, light-filled apartment overlooking NYU’s cam

      16 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2023

      How thoughtlesslyI took it, this castiron Aunt Jemima doll hauled from the trunkof my whitefriend’s car. Another of T’s, her Jamaicanhusband’s, mementoshe collected as a joke. Not unlikethose figurinesI recall a college friend once exhibited, who’d b

      6 min read

    • Article

      What Kind of Angel: On Percy Shelley

      Nov 21, 2022

      Shelley saw himself as a conduit for the electricity of the universe. The post What Kind of Angel: On Percy Shelley appeared first on The Millions.

      15 min read

    • Article

      Apparition

      Mar 26, 2020

      Apparition
      8 min read

    • Article

      Poets

      Dec 1, 2020

      Poets
      19 min read

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Everything Happens Today

    3.5/5

    22 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      As far as young-adult novels go, I think this ranks right up there with Perks of Being a Wallflower and Speak. There isn't anything traumatic about the book as there is in those other two, but that doesn't mean the novel doesn't equally capture teenage angst and the sort of intellectual machinations teenagers go about. I particularly liked the ways in which Browner tied teenage judgment of adult decisions/situations into the character's thought process: all teens judge their parents particularly harshly, which perhaps becomes one of the biggest regrets of many adult lives.

      I gave my copy of this book to my teenage son to read. I hope he likes it as much as I did.
    • 4/5
      Wes is seventeen, but he feels much, much older the night that he takes the long walk home from an Upper East Side apartment to his house in Greenwich Village. For an average seventeen year old guy, the night he loses his virginity would be a momentous occasion. Wes, however, is anything but average as we come to find out during the course of the next day of his life as he reflects on losing his virginity to the "wrong" girl, nurses his terminally ill mother, tries to make a deadline for a revised paper about War and Peace, and attempts to cook a bizarre meal that will bring his whole fragile family to the table. In the course of one ordinary yet extraordinary day, Wes grows up and learns some important lessons all while readers are treated to a unique and extremely vividly drawn family and a main character whose unexpectedly deep thoughts about life and love appeal to our own experience.Through much of the reading, Everything Happens Today inspires mixed feelings. On one hand, Browner's choice to write his novel without chapter breaks has the tendency to make Wes's narrative monotonous, and gives the impression that Wes's sometimes incessant navel-gazing will proceed in circles without breaks or ends indefinitely not unlike Borges' Library of Bable, an illustration Wes is particularly drawn to. On the other hand, getting inside Wes's thought-pattern and learning the reasoning that drives him is what ends up making Everything Happens Today stand out. Wes is a more or less typical teenager who spends a little too much time with his iPhone, wonders if he is good enough for the girl he loves (or if what he feels for her is even truly love), and gets frustrated with his family, but Wes is also a bookish, thoughtful sort of guy who loves his family sacrificially, wants to be a truly good person, and struggles with the decisions he's making as he works his way into an unstoppable adulthood where his dearest wish is that he not become his father. In short, Wes is a lovable narrator both despite and because of his perpetual over-thinking, and he will make readers root for him that he might come to an understanding and an acceptance of his life such as it is.Even though Wes is the heart and soul of the book, Browner creates a cast of secondary characters - Wes's parents, his sister, his best friend, the girls he might or might not be in love with - that leap off the page. His beloved little sister comes off just as quirky and innocent as intended. His father shuffles through a life populated with broken dreams and unmet potential that Wes himself loathes. His ill mother is a fragile shell of herself whose former life is barely visible beneath her current circumstances. His friend is the perfect well-intentioned meddler. The girls he falls for are as much fully fleshed out characters in their own right as they are lessons in what love really looks like for the hapless Wes.It would be lying to say that Wes's deep thoughts combined with their lack of chapter breaks don't make Everything Happens Today a little difficult to tackle. That said, what I've come to appreciate about the Europa Editions books that I've read thus far, is that they make me think and work at them a little before yielding what is nearly always a rewarding, if somewhat atypical, reading experience. I'm fully convinced that readers will fall in love with loyal, well-intentioned Wes, just as I did, and be caught up in and ultimately charmed by this unusual tale of coming of age today.
    • 4/5
      This is a wonderful novel about one day in the life of Wes, a seventeen-year-old boy in an elite school in Manhattan. But while this is usually the recipe for eye rolling in my opinion (sorta had it with the disenchanted, cruel, rich white kid set), this was a great book! I loved Wes. He is a teenager to be sure, but grappling with some things all humans face, and trying to figure out a kind way to get there - and see people for who they really are. Some of Wes's mental wanderings are absolutely priceless, and there are many of them, from reflections "War and Peace," Bob Ross the television painter, Buddhism and the gift of a good teacher. My only complaint, which is why I did not rate this at five stars, is I was patently aware that this was a forty-something person/author writing as a teenager. Most observations were just "too" astute, too, well, life-experience gained, and not the acumen most teenagers have. Wes had a some hardships to deal with, for sure (a distant father and a dying mother), but he just seemed way too wise and experienced for his young age. That being said, it's a great book and I recommend it highly.

    Book preview

    Everything Happens Today - Jesse Browner

    gdbook_preview_excerpt.html}|۲Ƒ`azoK9 Peq¦"= =nqS?/g_2k PrbП"v_{X|kSůśxw/՛Ż}3//_-iCnf'|?_o8翙P]9ٿk.ś MO~._^s30\ +_0cSe+R<*N<x`RSOnc6![HHXXۘuc~7xK<?_sUx.l] q)[[oR}ٶ0)XڥnS1]zSP/Z4)硍\ >!7@!u/fx\_VΨ 1O7S57KS Hߌo~Sg>{̮B|㹉K7|ZU7tƱ!ɞ+>=f*l- bkpqhm}׻8 M?C:ۃ~X߾ղ4cjGϱ/n?9;M6`?8ؖW#w)T? W5u]?ꯞqǣTor|<,b0QuŇr9F̼t\"LBQMWb|Lj#v F}M +JKiXNg=P*ĹYW@$+&N~ir W,kNj|Ark,oH3UK7́$pxA r&,eq'a[v(vI%=G~i u3JTENfs({cQC J&)caGU?y\wա K)--fF 8y)Onf( sAE!]ڇ)T M(? {{jf,fz(T \7WF +8Ep+ H aBӚqjiCz,L|͐^;Z7Oˍgk)-Xm9?lz62W Q`ϯm퇫)N^i jTء`8.HVWgXT@m,6͚ʏ3c;֌."d[8B\Ys1c 6bZW@IA(א;I:G` S D:tcцtza"i^RCuQEXi $RL6K3tL6]qCؙv m{\Gx:  N}v`/1JL I~G31^lݶ 4bl/\5dɓs˻5Lχ)c2D6]bl2:s;H&l-OѼh{,asE7`e38I4 ߋNJw6aFjl@>t+n*LOŜx4Pw>H>QSt FiP >aKztD=vԘM"i^EHm)B2|>oQ*,r}@;+I}j&l~Wz9 ϡ?9uaĒzGf9#p6~ygR@RhoLy0`4:(էoxHE,sVQ>|͸ᘬe:kƃX!ۑk\fRo Ȏ0>Ճw耲&!ߙ:Jn%K6Atƅa)LjV+Vi"B|y @@v ( rj.]p!c2%,s\uAtcKb¾|3sC$5^h}]H+po.a@SlδGҶ7?C=(Qrit蓿9/"2r9B1@4iWr+@rP?C&po2LaUȐ~Dbt0TV" dcS![H' K,f2h%}-wnDæ(qyԩ9zPZ_?M!giTF LN%W, jCVR]<.)5Fl0~@%`)[Wkk J"*t) @$]dTJr񖼔z گhro2}ľC:])qu$˟I|ҕesYc5@D/lqù"yF"Vԫxxm_NĭaezJxە#;G_qF]me^zu! @LW 䔊-L)xfڶqD^\R)CtX1s"eWD71-uM 5.`sN-MWr/NpRl.O2`98:tMLh*ATlad6 0cO sK \61dG,do?oSH2N#֑6|T%\,D⸓ L'q4=chU$cy8EͫI{ y-˻P3ȎtJcB<h׌Us$}Wg y-Tg$~" U̩I_ )Ljݵg{aѺi5SI-`M+y*1Y=\f04Ń'"7͑>1E HS*!qbR2~ز^䮀=o$S3rz\-3܆(A"Adex]6L?dd6LjL<9Q.^Cx'dZ"R4\'H,8^`OJ'b~ v6EDx7,#9IoEb#/+<#+W0+9!E:5F X [~ŏ3}siX7<Xif&(``E==_j0!DZ7R_>o4ʬ7Fm5l)dMXYYUb$>-[a9fb;wkRc.ӊ?O5'.y&{%7*+c[Bv8ؚM92\XK83rTnx*$/M[;Z:HHYSm܇m2.{"zPL uCz;pQe+&Zh Uch^.39C ^ËL}Q8 ˡmTIfHVɴ0cӍ0ʲ {4izJ3[dkU&ZX-yS d? E M|[a~,d耳E5a`=U+@´X湋P& J i,3{dt>?qM2t/jsCR(nEeDxkX\3Lh k(ddq ܓӖ:홆ao5gwo8c{Zos Y4 1 KZm6r<#WU_o  vI2ݖs90]2Ȫ-ZZIJ_ʠeF\J*2w}J홁tB͙CDWrဠO,"{7LSI[) ZѧҀX>?4=V ?̡,zůEԁ@J rpɀR=ܚ]2B$a0[<&r\k{KD/_yX菞 96ݢ,9p՘oz-l,UD 3z[c{tv/Rk׿Č15?zvkS'1lqՒ|7~~xWyCZPJ\Fc. 0US'?=#lE]]KV:a,ccJC5za3'}eB'}O7$f6*KVK*B4Ț`=\S)Fa %̵ $מ S9m9NR`SNβmȼ&#y3WLR;b1'ռ=oY~ 9]Eztӿ1F9&Ýyh\?ϯTPx„x<]{L۸eo0ƔuTbMdoM*S[i_sؕD>͸Y(YRbXLNs9MckUy6-]7}CS^ZT|@M'bEᚃ>:2X73 2$  u~tB0Wh!e1X:5xLUMLncoF$M|[šٚx2 R;Ne;mɥ.>-G1tj>11w ݶar[nJ 3Mx9b5^X-Z#f.sCI\)Yt4` XWUC%wRI6OXY ߚH(G6XTlM/.tj˯9}>TZO| D)-JsYk՟l,6N8y7gV6}M[IMEWy]{J҇5.wa5f6؇)XޱQv<ݕI5k6L/v -TBUWF3T=e4(X]ŀ1O+yXtʎD!Ff9nwuV!̎NEP "Sa=XC.3 }Wz; c_F݋k(aۊv-E%~ SDam<. OFvjF C*eҷzfJ]'`ϡbaIOjP_5S UQTM} ~M$S=V^|w]SU) kRcvƎki4J@9ZPFӯvuAiy)AwJ: ɀeG DUݏb@/="U B]pyivt^0Č}M`RLXt^;-)T#N?6KDNV$QtK+TBQ:H k}_El8z;K*W?u\q`d=zz8!8eVv$ɞb \wkgo\Rɭ#1*V$ P=$_8T`u՛1Kcfqt:gyOq+wNk7aµm{V3甽5nGk֮Yӟ)?!4L!Al_o0YVC1^5R}  .3LfDҬu Hmc/K07]iU7pEn5gqҿ[~30['of٭+cN?7;0KU(jX[%h\Rgl0ř%S7"&L;5U^H,4v|ܹ G Knt5K/3+'xF&cpsG* X `/rNJ'k{^4tdێM277eX?UxMty5DK7C_٥Os~;Y:(qcjc?NIleSn Ň Eܮ'%ɴFq"(L|jLsl C**93޾U*u~vl/N+}R(/$ n߲]OL ~YFƜNn{cvo7,°(8Hbx!dM\v˂Ulm'OVQR> ^^76ۅ9[eL63g.20NbOFF}ReL⎍2nb[St%7\g5)28ЗeZƼѕy^Y?wVN2=[ti;0L"­UR4ul_[Xl 4$%UړĀs2Qn(ZvO%X:]HW_>-=yH('C*Д{U~#zTR]n *e,DΜ0wsbϏ " GB+Kz6ͩj<с,oGLL>v6r L#){W|%gt΂ 4P6 xԜD(np/m8Y@}uU:`mciΛfFs =y C? ~mƟP},~-Yz*pI:i , "-SfLӠLJVAT bf~NN v3^-$ u~պ}[I02Z$؅k6 m <ē?FC[I\a6˴өpsȧfyq-_`(yV=am0.oL>Q:Nѭw~U]7ȪR\a |h# Hح¶zѶ>:XNzt9,h[=akYڭڎ>Xƒ/tEuyP=5QN
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1