A review by tippycanoegal
The Futilitarians: Our Year of Thinking, Drinking, Grieving, and Reading by Anne Gisleson

4.0

This is a thoughtful, honest, delightful memoir that centers around the first somewhat fabulously quirky year of reading and conversation for the New Orleans "Existential Crisis Reading Group." Along the way, it also becomes focused on the author's large family and its losses. The author, who is smart, articulate, and deeply sensitive to the great absurdities of life, is generous in her straight-up sharing of herself and her ideas as they revolve around the readings and her responses and musings. I loved this book, even though I more than once wished that an editor had helped to resolve some of the repetitions that creep in along the way. The book's setting--New Orleans--plays a big role here and allows those of us who have all-too-briefly fallen under its spell to imagine life there.