Publisher's Weekly Review
Giselson's memoir is a compassionate journey through personal grief, as well as a smart compendium of literature. After the suicides of her twin sisters (Rachel and Rebecca) and the destruction Hurricane Katrina wreaks in her hometown of New Orleans, Giselson and her husband Brad bring friends together in what they called the Existential Crisis Reading Group, or ECRG. Giselson, who's written for the Atlantic and the Oxford American, documents a year in which she and the ECRG explore the meaning of life as they read, drink, and share ideas. What ensues is a dynamic examination of human suffering and human joy. They discuss an all-star lineup of literature-including the works of Kingsley Amis, Epicurus, Clarice Lispector, Shel Silverstein, and Leo Tolstoy, to name a few. Giselson nicely evokes the Catholic teachings she learned from her parents; most moving, though, is her hard look at her twin sisters' lives: both were fraught with mental illness and addiction, traits shared by their father, who was a death-row lawyer in Louisiana. Her narrative is a wonderful look at friendship and grief, as well as an enlightening personal literary journey. Agent: Emma Parry, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An engrossing memoir chronicles a search for spiritual healing.In 2011, happily married and the mother of two children, journalist Gisleson (New Orleans Center for Creative Arts; co-editor: How to Rebuild a City: Field Guide from a Work in Progress, 2010) was beset by a "persistent, daily, unsettling dread," a feeling, "vaguely, that everything was wrong." When a close friend asked her to "sit down and talk through some philosophical issues one-on-one," she suggested forming a group instead: other friends, too, seemed in flux and on edge, and the author hoped that a monthly meeting, discussing relevant readings, would help. They called themselves the Existentialist Crisis Reading Group, nicknamed the Futilitarians. Chosen by the dozen or so members, readings ranged from Ecclesiastes to James Baldwin, King Lear to Fight Club and included philosophy, fiction, essays, poetry, biography, memoir, and even a movie. (The author appends the group's reading list.) As Gisleson conveys her responses to these disparate readings, she reveals the events of her life that generated her "messy thoughts and feelings." When she was in her late 20s, her youngest sister, Rebecca, committed suicide; a year and a half later, Rebecca's identical twin, Rachel, also killed herself; and, more recently, her father succumbed to leukemia. Added to these was the devastation to her native New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina. Rebecca's death left her shattered. "Unmarried, insecure, and chronically confused," Gisleson writes, "I became paralyzed in my personal life, unable to make good decisions to move things forward." Rachel's death compounded those feelings, preoccupying the author for years. "I harbor a terrible, guilty suspicion," she writes, "that the deaths of my sisters, their disappearance from the family structure," allowed the remaining siblings "to do things we might not otherwise have ventured." Rebecca and Rachel, their life choices, and mental illness are central to Gisleson's story, as is her father, an opinionated, hard-drinking lawyer whose pro bono work for death row inmates the author seeks to understand. A graceful narrative that seamlessly interweaves philosophical reflections and intimate revelations. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Brought together by the geography of post-Katrina New Orleans and a shared sense of existential crises, a group of friends forms a unique reading club. They meet monthly, huddling together in the bareness of our condition, with wine and food and fellowship and reading, acknowledging our defenselessness but seeking comfort in connection. Each member is drawn to the Existential Crisis Reading Group for different reasons; author Gisleson is deeply entrenched in grief after losing her twin sisters and beloved father. In this unanticipated fulcrum of midlife, she embarks on a yearlong journey of philosophical study and self-discovery. With beautiful writing, Gisleson effortlessly weaves existentialism around narrative, challenging and engaging readers with a seamless blend of theory and memoir. Writer and educator Gisleson's first book-length work weighs heavy with life's toughest questions and then instantaneously elevates the soul with hope, making for a charming, captivating, and incredibly smart must-read.--Norstedt, Melissa Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ANNE GISLESON'S "The Futilitarians" is an entry in the category that Joyce Carol Oates has called the "bibliomemoir," a first-person narrative that incorporates reading in its structure. The author, a writer and teacher, offers a month-by-month chronicle of a literary discussion group she founded and hosted in her New Orleans home. The attendees are mostly youngish professionals of an artistic or intellectual bent. When she, her husband, Brad, and their friend Chris conceived the project, they had a philosophical approach in mind; the idea was to put an emphasis on ideas. Gisleson wanted to call the group "The Futilitarians," but the membership settled on "The Existential Crisis Reading Group," or E.C.R.G.. The reader can hear the ironic inflection; ever since "Annie Hall" it's been impossible to say "existential crisis" without smirking. Even as the moving spirit of this worthy project, Gisleson had mixed feelings. It "could by turns seem pretentious, goofy or totally necessary." But the plan to let each member choose a reading each month yielded a lively and eclectic list, from Epicurus to Arthur Koestler to John Cheever to Clarice Lispector. And in a town as intensely convivial as New Orleans, who needed an excuse to talk and drink? (So much drinking! The coffee table was "a forest of bottles.") In the first few chapters, Gisleson introduces the members of the group. Aside from a few bold strokes - a man who practices "plumber's yoga," a chain-smoking historian who smells of patchouli - they seem rather faintly drawn. We don't learn much about the lives of these people, and as the months go by, they grow less rather than more distinct. Soon it becomes apparent that the E.C.R.G. is not the main act in this show. It's Gisleson herself who occupies center stage, and the drama she enacts is the story of her own deep and particular sorrows. One of these is the death of her identical twin sisters, the youngest among eight siblings, beautiful girls whose learning disabilities isolated them in an accomplished family. Within a span of 18 months each hanged herself while under the influence of cocaine and alcohol. Gisleson remembers them with a wondering, deploring tenderness that deepens throughout the book. The other sorrow is the death of her father from leukemia just as the E.C.R.G. is getting underway. He was a prominent lawyer, both secretive and flamboyantly extroverted, a passionate opponent of capital punishment and a family man with a habit of disappearing into dive bars. The twins, so easily forgotten in life, are a painful mystery to Gisleson, and so is her father, whose contradictions come into focus only after his death. Meanwhile, the E.C.R.G. continues its monthly meetings, considering works by Kingsley Amis (on drinking), Dante, Tolstoy and others. But for Gisleson, the readings function mostly as conduits to the netherworld of her memories. Oddly enough, this world is much larger, richer and more real than the world of the Futilitarians. The dead dwell here, but also the living: Gisleson's mother is touchingly portrayed, as is Ronald, the death row inmate whom her father counseled for years. And post-Katrina New Orleans itself is an essential component of this world; it lives on the page in pungent detail, with all its disastrous losses and fragile hopes. The fading away of the E.C.R.G. puzzles the reader. How did it happen? Did the death of Gisleson's father in the month of the first meeting change the direction of the memoir? This is a serious structural flaw in an otherwise estimable book. Is it a deal-breaker? No, because the memoir that lives inside the bibliomemoir is moving and complete and very much worth reading. Emily fox Gordon is the author of "Book of Days: Personal Essays
