Everything is Horrible and Wonderful: A Tragicomic Memoir of Genius, Heroin, Love and Loss
Written by Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Narrated by Stephanie Wittels Wachs
4/5
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About this audiobook
But it will remain alive in me for hundreds of thousands of future moments.
One phone call. That's all it took to change Stephanie Wittels Wachs's life forever . . .
Her younger brother Harris, a star in the comedy world known for his work on shows like Parks and Recreation, had died of a heroin overdose. How do you make sense of such a tragic end to a life of so much hilarious brilliance?
In beautiful, unsentimental, and surprisingly funny prose, Stephanie Wittels Wachs alternates between her brother's struggle with addiction, which she learned about three days before her wedding, and the first year after his death, in all its emotional devastation. This compelling portrait of a comedic genius and a profound exploration of the love between siblings is The Year of Magical Thinking for a new generation of listeners.
A heartbreaking but hopeful memoir of addiction, grief, and family, Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful will make you laugh, cry, and wonder if that possum on the fence is really your brother's spirit animal.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Stephanie Wittels Wachs is a writer whose work has been featured on Vox, Longform, Huffington Post, Fatherly, Mamamia, Babble, and Medium. Other significant roles include mother, theatre artist, educator, and voice actor. She graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and went on to receive her Master’s from University of Houston School of Theatre and Dance. She is co-founder of Rec Room Arts, a non-profit arts organization committed to developing innovative work across disciplines. Find her comedic musings on parenting (and life) on her weekly podcast, “Hands Off Parents." She lives in Houston, Texas with her family.
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Reviews for Everything is Horrible and Wonderful
47 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Raw, funny, heartbreaking and beautiful. It's an engrossing and tragic look at familial live and grief.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I’m not sure if this is fair, given that the book explains more than anything that grief is not an event but an ongoing part of life, but I felt like the book might’ve worked better as a long-form article than a 270-page book. The prose is good at conveying what grief means to an individual, but after a third or so into the book, the story repeats the same message until the end. Not a bad book, but an unpleasant read that felt repetitive in a way that made the book less compelling over time.