Want a NOOK? Explore Now
A perceptive, witty memoir about the transformative humiliations of childhood-and adulthood-from a unique, already-beloved voice.
When Heather Havrilesky was a kid during the '70s, harrowing disaster films dominated every movie screen with earthquakes that destroyed huge cities, airplanes that plummeted towards the ground and giant sharks that ripped teenagers to shreds. Between her parents' dramatic clashes and her older siblings' hazing, Heather's home life sometimes mirrored the chaos onscreen.
A thoughtful, funny memoir about surviving the real and imagined perils of childhood and early adulthood, Disaster Preparedness charts how the most humiliating and painful moments in Havrilesky's past forced her to develop a wide range of defense mechanisms, some adaptive, some piteously ill-suited to modern life. From premature boxing lessons to the competitive grooming of cheerleading camp, from her parents' divorce to her father's sudden death, Havrilesky explores a path from innocence and optimism to self-protection and caution, bravely reexamining the injuries that shaped her, the lessons that sunk in along the way, and the insights that carried her through.
By laying bare her bumps and bruises, Havrilesky offers hope that we can find a frazzled and unruly, desperate and wistful, restless and funny and frayed-at-the-edges way of staring disaster in the face, and even rising to meet it head on. By turns offbeat, sophisticated, uproarious and wise, Disaster Preparedness is a road map to the personal disasters we all face from an irresistible voice that gets straight to the unexpected grace at the heart of every calamity.
Generic family memoir about growing up in North Carolina in the 1970s.
ForSalonstaff writer Havrilesky, as for most, childhood was a mix of ups and downs. The youngest of three, she was at the mercy of her older brother and sister—though, despite claims to the contrary, the abuse seemed to stop at minor offenses, like serving her an unappetizing cocktail of tomato juice and seltzer. Her parents' fights and eventual divorce were a major turning point in the author's childhood, invoking an understandable amount of instability, fear and strange vacations with other families who had different ways of looking at things. Adolescence came with the usual angst and awkwardness—a shining example of which was when she lost her virginity to a Paul Bunyan wannabe who was secretly pining after her best friend, and who, much to Havrilesky's shagrin, told the entire school about their tryst, which came back to haunt her even years later at a reunion. Finally, when her siblings had shipped off to college, the author looked forward to quiet time at home with her mother after what felt like years of chaos. But the relative peace was soon broken when her elderly grandmother could no longer live on her own and moved in. As an adult, Havrilesky tried to analyze memories with her therapist, delving into complicated feelings toward her father, who is no longer living, her mother, who still tries to control many things about her life, and other experiences. Now married and a mother of two, she tries to make sense of how her childhood influenced the adult that she has become.
Havrilesky's life is relatable but unremarkable—a pleasantly told story, but not compelling enough to sustain a full book.
Introduction 1
1 Cousins 72
2 Fear Itself 21
3 Faculty Wives 37
4 Jesus Must Die 59
5 D-l-V-O-R-C-E 71
6 Sting Like a Bee 89
7 Bobos 103
8 Cheer 115
9 With or Without You 135
10 The Toad Work 149
11 A Tree Falls in the Forest 169
Anonymous
Posted June 10, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted January 20, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted February 28, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted January 28, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted March 2, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted January 8, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted January 22, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
A perceptive, witty memoir about the transformative humiliations of childhood-and adulthood-from a unique, already-beloved voice.
When Heather Havrilesky was a kid during the '70s, harrowing disaster films dominated every movie screen with earthquakes that destroyed huge cities, airplanes that plummeted towards the ground and giant sharks that ripped teenagers to shreds. Between her parents' dramatic clashes and her older siblings' hazing, ...