The Possible Universe

In her touching memoir of enduring friendship and transformative grief, Amanda Leduc intertwines the unfathomable nature of loss with the equally unfathomable nature of the universe. When Amanda Leduc meets her university flatmate Jess, she knows instantly that she’s found her platonic soulmate. For twelve years they share a once-in-a-lifetime friendship, a connection so transcendent and affirming, they felt like it was written into the fabric of the universe. When Jess dies of breast cancer at thirty-seven, Amanda’s world collapses in on itself, the loss as infinite as the cosmos itself. So, like so many astrophysicists, philosophers and ordinary people before her, Amanda turns to the skies to try and make sense of it all. Her memoir about the loss of Jess traverses space and time, intricately weaving the before-and-after of their friendship with Amanda's layperson contemplation of black holes, gravity, quantum mechanics, constellations and more, drawing profound parallels between these elements and Amanda’s feelings of love and loss, grief and hope. In every chapter, Amanda investigates the questions that spur explorations of grief and space alike. Do our souls go on after death? Can we reach through space and time to connect with the people, the stars, we’ve lost? What lies beyond what we can see? Approaching these questions with curiosity and humility, she gently prompts readers to find their place in the universe. While we may be small in the boundless expanse of outer space, our inner space is just as vast, a complex web holding many possible and impossible feelings at once. As incisive and intensely personal as it is expansive and universal, The Possible Universe is a remarkable pursuit of both wonder and understanding.