She Treads Softly: Bad Vibes Only

Thursday, October 6, 2022

Bad Vibes Only

Bad Vibes Only: (and Other Things I Bring to the Table) by Nora McInerny
10/11/22; 224 pages
Atria/One Signal Publishers

Bad Vibes Only: (and Other Things I Bring to the Table) by Nora McInerny is a highly recommended collection of nineteen essays.

In the "Before We Begin" opening where McInerny discusses people saying everything is "fine" in response to the question, "how are you?" no matter how things really are, she immediately won my heart as a co-worker and I repeatedly would say, "It's fine, everything is fine" to each other in stressed out voices while running to handle one crisis after another. These essays excel in the truisms that reside within them and many people will be able to relate to most of the essays on some level.

The essays are all honest and reflect on events that have happened in her life, some of them are weighty, and this is where their strength lies. Subjects cover include in part: grief and loss, parenting, self-improvement, aging, makeup, teenage years, several childhood experiences, mental health, social media, and more. All of the essays are firmly experiences from her life, which made them skew a bit on the younger side for me, but they will likely resonate much more with people, especially mothers, in their thirties to early forties.

The writing is very good and the topics are interesting. McInerny uses humor and vulnerability to share the empathetic insights into her life. As with any collection of essays, not all of them will appeal to everyone but most readers will find something to enjoy in this collection. And the cover is very appealing.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Atria/One Signal via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.