In a memoir entitled Disaster Preparedness nothing much happens at all – unless you count the daily business of life and growing up in the 70s as a disaster. Heather Havrilesky is author of the sarcastic Rabbit blog. Up until this past year she was a staff writer at Salon.com. Havrilesky’s blog is clever and entertaining. She tackles all manner of pop culture, entertainment and personalities. At the heart of this non-fiction memoir is an interesting metaphor about life and the messy process of growing up at a time when children were raised in a culture of fear. Hard not to grow up slightly maladapted or anxious if some adult, teacher or newscaster is always shouting “It’s the end of the world!” The Iran Hostage Crisis, The Regan years and constant threats of World War 3 were reference points for Havrilesky’s formative years. The cultural references here in Disaster Preparedness are both fun, resonant and slightly grating. At times the references were a bit overly familiar to me, a writer of about the same age as Havrilesky. In fact at times I felt as if I might have been reading a story of my own early years. Havrilesky was raised by parents that argued bitterly and then got a divorce, which is hardly earth shattering. Many children of the time period were in the same boat. Havrilesky’s gift is sarcasm and she excels at recreating the 70s in fine detail. There are scenes here of birthday parties gone awry and parents acting out ridiculous soap operas as if life too were a performance. “Around the time my parents stopped making the slightest effort to hide their distaste for each other, we started taking long family vacations in the car each summer. This is the perverse logic of two people caught in a crumbling marriage: Instead of spending as little time together as possible, they vow to spend more time together, thinking they might reignite some lost spark through the purgatory of enforced contact.” She is at her best when skewering rights of passage like high school cheerleading tryouts, which she dubs a masochistic ritual. Sarcasm is one of the most difficult tools for a writer to make jump off the page, but Havrilesky’s on line writing has clearly helped her to hone this style. Fans who follow her on line writing will enjoy this memoir, but it is not the type of read that will appeal to everyone. At times I couldn’t wait for this book to be done, but I love a good metaphor and this idea of life as a great series of disasters that happen between the lines while waiting on perfection, well that is a truly gorgeous use of this literary device. And the ending, well it is empowering and lovely and strangely perfect.
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• Disaster Preparedness, by Heather Havrilesky, Dec. 30, 2010 Riverhead Hardcover Books (Penguin Books USA), New York, 256 pages, $25.95 or $32.50 Canada, Hardcover ISBN 978-1-59448-768-2
I was given a copy of this book to review. My opinion is all my own.
Looks like an interesting memoir. I suppose that growing up in the 70’s was probably even worse (in terms of the fatalistic news chatter) than it is today.