Read the First Chapter of My Debut Novel on the 3rd Anniversary of Its Publication

'Psalms for the End of the World', the most 'me' thing I've ever written, was released three years ago this week

“Ingenious and compelling,” or at least that’s what The Times UK called my debut novel Psalms for the End of the World when it was released by Headline Books three years ago this week. I still have trouble believing the paper — along with others such as The Guardian and The Daily Mail — thought so highly of it. To me, it’s still just the novel I felt compelled to start writing six years ago, 3 a.m. one wintry London morning, with my sleeping nine-day-old son strapped to my chest.

I wasn’t sure at the time if anybody but me would care about my time-bending existential mystery and love story, but, since then, I’ve been incredibly moved to discover the anxiety, the grief, the fears, and, most of all, the hope that provided shape to the book has resonated with so many.

To commemorate the anniversary of Psalms’ publication on September 3rd, 2022, I wanted to share with you the first chapter of the novel, to introduce you to my sprawling mosaic, my pop-culture puzzle box, the most personal thing I’ve ever written. But first, maybe you’d like to read what it’s about…scroll down.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION

It’s 1962 and physics student Grace Pulansky believes she has met the man of her dreams, Robert Jones, while serving up slices of pecan pie at the local diner. But then the FBI shows up, with their fedoras and off-the-rack business suits, and accuses him of being a bomb-planting mass-murderer.

Finding herself on the run with Jones across America’s Southwest, the discoveries awaiting Gracie will undermine everything she knows about the universe. Her story will reveal how scores of lives — an identity-swapping rock star, a mourning lover in ancient China, Nazi hunters in pursuit of a terrible secret, a crazed artist in pre-revolutionary France, an astronaut struggling with a turbulent interplanetary future, and many more — are interconnected across space and time by love, grief, and quantum entanglement.

Spanning continents, centuries, and dimensions, this exquisitely crafted and madly inventive novel — a triple-disk, concept-album of a book — is the perfect immersive read for fans of David Mitchell, Emily St. John Mandel, and Margaret Atwood.

Read more about PSALMS or order a copy here.

CHAPTER ONE

The newscaster with the deep, reassuring voice says, ‘It now appears that sometime yesterday morning, the Soviet Union exploded a thermonuclear device some two and a half miles over the Arctic Sea island of Novaya Zemlya,’ and the man sitting on the mustard-colored couch, crystal tumbler of Canadian Club in one hand and an RCA Wireless Wizard in the other, decides unequivocally that the truest words ever scribbled on a page were ‘All the world’s a stage’, because none of this bullshit is real.

Jones adjusts one of the brick-sized remote control’s two dials, and the newscaster’s voice grows louder. ‘The blast of the device, believed to be the largest ever built, was witnessed over six hundred miles away. President Kennedy immediately denounced the test, saying that it threatened to derail current US–Soviet test-ban talks. He added that Americans should heed his call to immediately construct personal and neighborhood fallout shelters in the case such a nuclear weapon were to be detonated inside the United St — ’

The television blinks off. Jones stares at it for a moment longer, listening to the picture tubes still humming behind its concave screen, then rises and goes to the set of three windows that look out from his little slice of heaven. From here, he can see light in his neighbors’ family room window.

Ralph Beckermann is standing in front of his own television, the electric glow of the newscaster’s face quavering across his face. Jones and Ralph bought the same Victor color television on a joint Saturday outing to Woolworth an hour before three Jack and Cokes prompted Ralph to confess he was enjoying regular sexual congress with his sister-in-law every Tuesday evening instead of bowling like he tells Peggy. Peggy’s on the couch behind Ralph, hands folded neatly in her lap. Their two boys are on the loveseat, hair crew cut like their dad’s because all they want to be is just like him. The family looks terrified.

Next door to the Beckermanns’ place is the Olsens’. Christmas lights are still strung along the sagging gutters because Hank Olsen has been working overtime since before Thanksgiving and on weekends can’t be bothered to do more than go shooting up on Mount Baldy with his two oldest boys since the third one, the youngest, is too slow to be trusted with live rounds. The tableau in the Olsens’ window is indistinguishable from the one in the Beckermanns’ — anxious, frightened faces, wondering how long it will be before they’re vaporized.

Hank is sleeping with Ralph’s wife, Peggy. Hank’s wife, Elaine, made a pass at Jones three weeks ago at Kellogg’s as Gracie pretended not to take notice, and Jones knows none of this ritualized stupidity is real, this Norman Rockwell-shoved-through-a-sausage grinder-with-sex-and-six-shooters-and-manifest destiny bullcrap, no matter how good the Manhattan ad-men and politicians in Washington are at selling it to Americans.

But hey, at least the whiskey is good.

Jones takes a long pull from his glass until all that remains is pebbles of ice. As he finishes the ice off, too, his eyes find the iron-grey Samsonite Streamlite suitcase standing next to the front door. He picked it up at a garage sale in Glendale last week, knowing full well what he intended it for. Turned out to be the perfect size, down to the inch.

Jones goes to his bathroom then, where he shaves his perfect superhero’s chin and combs King John’s beeswax pomade into his dark hair that, in most light, looks pitch black. The face in the mirror still startles him sometimes, but everything changes, he knows. Everything. One thing into another, on and on, until whatever was has become an infinite number of things it wasn’t before. He next dresses in a slate-grey suit, pin-striped and double-breasted like the one he saw in that picture where the actor with the bronze skin and strange accent was chased by a homicidal crop duster. His fedora is a perfect match and, unlike the suit that’s so stiff and formal despite how casual the actor made it seem, feels good on him.

Outside, Jones carefully places the Streamlite in the trunk of the Alpine Green Oldsmobile Coupe with dented rear bumper parked in his driveway. That’s when he hears Ralph say, ‘You catch the news, Bob?’ from behind him. Ralph is standing in his own driveway, bottle of Budweiser in hand and a Lucky Strike dangling precariously from his bottom lip.

Jones regards him silently from behind the open lid of his trunk, then, looking one final time at the Streamlite, slams the trunk shut. ‘Yeah,’ he says, rounding the car to the driver’s door.

‘Peggy thinks we’re all gonna be dead by year’s end,’ Ralph says, crossing the road. He flicks his cigarette into the dark and its burning tip vanishes like a shooting star. When he reaches Jones, his voice lowers to a conspiratorial volume. ‘Hey, listen, you didn’t tell her about … you know? She keeps asking these questions and, well, I can’t get the bitch to shut up.’

‘Your secret’s safe with me, buddy,’ Jones says. He puts a wink in his voice and tries to smile, but he overdoes it and Ralph notices. He doesn’t hate Ralph. He just feels bad for him, for all of them, because they can’t see the world for what it really is. Not like he can.

Ten minutes later, Jones brakes at a stoplight downtown. It’s black out, no stars in the sky. Neon signs blaze even brighter because of this and, in the distance, two spotlights from the Pacific Hastings Drive-In trace indecipherable runes across unseen clouds. And there’s a drunk bum standing on the sidewalk, muttering to himself or the voices in his head or who knows, waving a sign he’s crafted out of cardboard and finger paint that warns DON’T FALL FOR IT. Jones acknowledges the bum with a quick nod, which seems to mollify him.

The light finally turns, and Jones watches the bum shrink behind him in the rearview. His eyes drift to the back seat and the trunk on the other side of it. To the Streamlite. A few minutes later, he parks outside Kellogg’s Diner.

Kellogg’s is a white oblong, all irregular angles like a poorly made sheet cake, dropped in the middle of small square that it and its parking lot are the sole occupants of. Blue and red neon trim its polished, futuristic surface like radioactive frosting, inviting the eye to peer inside its three walls of windows. Right now, Jones can see a waitress in an Easter-yellow dress with frilly white collar and a grease-stained apron standing behind the counter, next to a cash register, face buried as usual in a book the size of a Gutenberg Bible. He smiles, unable to stop himself.

Gracie stops her habitual humming when Jones enters, smiling with all of her heart-shaped face as she is prone to do. ‘Bobby!’ she says. ‘I was getting worried about you.’

Jones smiles, too, as he approaches the counter and its teal Formica surface that smells of Top Job — just like Gracie — from the post-supper rush clean-up. But there’s something different about him, something wrong, and she notices it right away.

‘Can’t sleep without my pie,’ he says, lying.

Gracie fetches the coffee carafe from the warmer, and Jones watches her and knows she knows he’s watching her. When she returns, her thin, closed lips curving upwards, she pours the coffee and asks in her typically cheerful manner, ‘What will it be tonight, Mr Jones?’

The cook, Leon, listens from the kitchen. He doesn’t like Jones for some reason he won’t reveal and never has. He sweats a lot.

‘There’s apple, pumpkin, a peach, key lime, and, if you’re in the mood for something new, May baked a pecan that’s out of this world. I may have snuck a piece.’

‘Pecan pie?’

Gracie nods, grinning at how Jones’s eyes have reacted to this unexpected piece of intelligence. Pecan pie has been absent from the menu since he became a regular here six or seven months ago. Must be a seasonal thing.

‘Let’s be daring,’ he says. ‘How was class today?’

‘You ask me that every night, and I feel like I bore you to tears every night going on about it,’ she says, cutting into the pie.

‘Why would you think that?’

Gracie sets a slice of pie in front of him, giving the plate a tiny, playful shove so it slides a few inches towards him across the river of shiny teal that divides them. ‘Whipped cream?’ But she knows the answer, and is already getting the tub from the fridge just inside the open kitchen door. ‘You just don’t look like the kind of guy who’s interested in physics, no matter how many times you’re sweet enough to act like you are.’

‘Nobody’s interested in that crap except you, girl,’ Leon says as he vigorously and loudly beats raw minced beef into patties for tomorrow.

Jones ignores Leon. ‘What kind of guy do I look like?’ he says.

Gracie scoops a large dollop of whipped cream from the tub, and drops it atop Jones’s slice of pie like it’s a well-deserved prize. ‘The kind of guy who likes pie,’ she says, grinning again.

Jones picks up his fork, plunges it into the center of the whipped cream, and takes an impressive bite of the pie. ‘Pecan especially, it would seem.’

‘Told you it was good.’

‘Well?’

‘Fine, if you’re really interested.’

‘He’s not,’ Leon says.

‘Shut up, Leon,’ Gracie says. She comes around the counter, and takes up position on the stool next to Jones. ‘So, the universe and everything in it, the laws that hold it together and, well, give it shape, they appear to be’ — she searches for the word — ‘calibrated or, or finely tuned to produce elements and, by extension, for life as we know it, for us, to evolve within it.’

‘Bob no speaka the español,’ Leon says.

‘Dangit, Leon, I will tell Warren why we keep coming up short on buns if you don’t mind your own business,’ she says. That shuts Leon up. She looks at Jones again. ‘Are you, Bobby? Following, I mean.’

Jones has shoved too much pie in his mouth, and can’t swallow it quickly enough. ‘More or less,’ he says, mumbling like an idiot around it.

‘So, this means, if the laws of physics, if they were different, even just a little bit, then the universe would’ve never happened,’ Gracie says. ‘We would’ve never happened.’

Jones takes another bite, this one more reasonable in dimensions, and chews slowly as he considers this ontological conundrum. His face reveals nothing, because he’s afraid if he’s not careful it could reveal too much. The problem is, she misinterprets his silence.

‘You must think I sound like a fool.’

‘I could never think that.’

Gracie smiles when he says this, but almost immediately realizes how close she is to him. Her hand is resting on the counter barely an inch from his. She rises quickly, and hugs the counter as she returns to the other side of it. ‘Dr Fröbe says this means that a universe, especially one that contains life and conscious beings like us — ’

‘Some might argue we’re not.’

She doesn’t understand what he means to imply, but is too aroused by what she’s discussing to slow down. ‘He says our existence must thus be considered a miracle.’

Jones leans back and tosses his napkin on the counter, never taking his eyes off her. He’s scrutinizing her, the way the thrill of her studies can illuminate her every feature anew, but also like this is the last time he’s ever going to see her and he doesn’t want to forget a single detail because, he knows, this is probably the last time he’s ever going to see her and he doesn’t want to forget a single detail.

The Streamlite in his trunk pops back into his mind, his face changes, and she notices again something isn’t quite right about him tonight. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

He pretends he didn’t hear her. ‘What do you think about what this — Dr Fröbe? — what this Fröbe says?’

Gracie hesitates, afraid of her own answer. She fills the silence by pouring Jones another cup of coffee. ‘I don’t really believe in miracles,’ she says.

Something wet and heavy, a ball of minced beef, slaps against the hard surface of the kitchen grill. Leon looks ready to fling one of his inchoate patties at Gracie’s head. ‘That damn school’s rotting your brain!’ he says. ‘You think God would’ve created a universe where we couldn’t live and breathe? This world was put here for us.’

She starts to snap back at Leon, but Jones interjects. ‘No, no, maybe he’s right,’ he says. ‘At least, not altogether wrong.’

Gracie looks at him, surprised. ‘I just think … maybe it’s a possibility,’ she says. But her confidence is shaken, she had believed Jones an ally and fellow compatriot of the woefully underpopulated Republic of Common Sense — somebody who saw the world as more than myths and fantasies — and he just jeopardized that. It’s right there on her face, plain as day

‘Tell her,’ Leon says to him. ‘Tell her she needs to get her head outta them books. Maybe even go on a date, am I right?’

Now Leon is really goading Gracie, because her romantic life is the one place he is never permitted to violate with his crudeness and all-knowing ignorance. She mouths sorry at Jones.

Jones offers her a sympathetic smile in reply, already standing. ‘You keep the change now,’ he says, drawing a crisp five from his wallet.

‘You’re leaving?’ she says.

‘There’s somewhere I have to be.’

‘Where?’ she says.

‘Somewhere.’

‘I’m off the clock in twenty,’ she says. ‘Wait for me.’

Gracie has never asked this of Jones before. She’s never asked anything of him at all, their relationship until this moment only comprised of conversations frustratingly chaperoned by Leon and unsaid things that have preoccupied Jones’s thoughts, sometimes keeping him up deep into the night, ever since he first met her and asked about the physics textbook she was studying and she, in turn, asked him if he’d ever heard of something called entanglement theory. Jones had said no, which was technically true, but later realized was also a lie because he knew more about its underpinning principles than her textbook could ever teach her.

‘I wish I could,’ he says. He walks towards the door, but he can feel Gracie watching him leave her. He stops suddenly, turns, and blurts out her name.

Gracie doesn’t move. At all. She’s been waiting for him to ask her out for at least a month, probably longer, and Jones knows it. Or, he should have. He should’ve spent every second he had with her even if none of this is real. Shakespeare thought we’re nothing more than actors, and maybe that should’ve been enough. Why couldn’t it be enough for Jones? Maybe because actors know they’re playing parts written for them …

‘I … I won’t be in for a while,’ he says finally. ‘I’ve got to go to go away for work.’

‘To that Indian reservation again?’ she asks.

‘No. That was — you should forget I ever mentioned that. I’ll see you again … hopefully.’

The hopefully immediately worries her. ‘What am I going to do without your nightly visits?’

Jones slips his fedora on, smiles at Gracie one last time, and walks out without looking back again because he knows he would change his mind if he did; he would take the stage with her and play the part and dance the part and sing the part and love her until the curtains dropped and the show closed for good. And so, it takes everything in Jones not to go back to Gracie, to tell her the truth about the trick that’s been played on her, what she really is and what he really is, and hope she can forgive him, because this is all his fault.

You can read more about Psalms for the End of the World here, as well as order a copy wherever you are in the world.

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Image courtesy of Cole Haddon and Headline Books