Nora McInerny Purmort

"So, you do what needs to be done. You get through it. The way Britney got through 2007 and made it a distant memory and an Internet meme; the way Reese Witherspoon got through her divorce with Ryan Phillippe when he was super hot and now you're, like, Ryan who? The way Jackie Kennedy got through picking up pieces of her husband's brain and then married a Greek bajillionaire. The way Beyonce got through the dismantling of Destiny's Child and emerged as Beyonce. The way Khaleesi emerged from show more the fire and became the Mother of Dragons."

Nora McInerny Purmort speaks to my soul. She also makes me cry a lot. It's Okay to Laugh is a memoir about loss and grief and what happens when someone loses their baby, father, and husband all in quick succession, but it's mostly a story of being okay with not being sure what it means to be an adult. Her story is devastating, but it's also messy and hilarious, much like life. Purmort bitches a lot about pyramid schemes, shares the horrors of navigating Tinder as a recent widow, and reminds us that no one's life is as perfect as their Instagram feed makes it look. It's Okay to Laugh is a love letter to strong marriages and passionate lives that reads more like a series of candid essays than a traditional memoir. Rich and heartbreaking and wonderful. show less

I have to admit I'd never heard of the author before picking this up. I typically like essay collections that have something meaningful to say about life in our crazy digital age, motherhood, and aging. So I grabbed BAD VIBES ONLY thinking that's exactly what I'd find here. And for the most part, it delivered.

McInery doesn't shy away from her tough stuff. She examines the difficult parts of her life (like losing her husband, her miscarriage, the death of her father, etc.) with a deft touch show more but also with some distance, as though these are topics she's rehashed again and again over the years. Her essays delve into grief, anxiety, parenthood, and the relentless pursuit of perfectionism. And while some of her observations are lighthearted, and I smiled a couple of times, nothing here was particularly humorous.

The essay "Stay at Home Mom" was a standout for me. It highlights McInerny's ambivalence towards travel in a way that mirrors exactly how I feel, and it's a refreshing take amidst a sea of Instagram-worthy adventure logs. But the essay where she describes leaving her 4-year old son in a hot car turned my stomach, and I had to put the book down for a while. show less

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 show more 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.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2022/10/bad-vibes-only.html show less

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Woops, totally forgot to review this for a while, life got a little crazy. Anyway, I really enjoy McInerny's view on life and humor. I have been wanting to read one of her books for a while after seeing her give a TED talk on dealing with loved ones passing and this did not disappoint. I am certainly looking forward to picking up her other books and would love to listen to these as audiobooks as I believe show more she reads them herself. show less