Universal Harvester Summary
Darnielle, John

Universal Harvester Overview

Darnielle's Universal Harvester, centers around multiple perspectives, which organize the way that events and people are understood; ultimately, there is no certainty in anything. The novel shifts from one narrator's viewpoint to another in both an enticing and puzzling way that causes constant questioning as to what is reality and what is conjecture. Jeremy Heldt, a simple video rental store clerk, serves as the most prominent and reliable of all characters, and his life is traced more intimately than any of the others. However, even his descriptions are contradictory and produce earnest mystification: Who is Lisa Sample? What happened to her mother, Irene? How is Lisa connected to the strange scenes in the tapes at the video store? Why are these questions extraordinarily important? Overlapping accounts from multiple characters' memories piece together a story that will take you to a place that refuses to end in a succinct and easily established conclusion. The novel simply asks for people to consider the varied stories of human life and how tales come together to reveal that there is nothing definitive. The only truth is what people are willing to share, and even that is not fully reliable.