BAD VIBES ONLY

Essays about aging and optimism by an Irish American writer and mother.

In the introduction, McInerny—host of the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking and author of It’s Okay To Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too) and The Hot Young Widows Club—dismisses unbridled, uncritical productivity: “I don’t want to live in a world where the only vibes are bad, but I cannot stay for long in a room where the only vibes allowed are the pleasant ones, either.” It is a fitting beginning for the variety of essays that follow, which examine how life’s greatest pleasures are often intertwined with danger, anxiety, and pain. In one essay, for example, the author writes about the time that she and her cousin slipped away during a family vacation, commandeered a canoe, and disappeared for eight hours as they paddled miles to town and back. After a harrowing, exhausting trip, they prepared themselves for a severe punishment only to find that their families never noticed that they were gone. In another piece, the author writes about the horror of accidentally leaving her 4-year-old son in a car for an hour after a family hike. “It is the rock in our shoe,” she writes, “the pea beneath a pile of mattresses, the time I almost killed our child with my mindlessness. He can say he forgives me, sure, but I know better. In therapy, I work on forgiving myself.” In “Asking for a Friend,” McInerny confesses how, when her first husband died, her grief-stricken behavior nearly ruined her most important friendships. Lighter pieces explore everything from taking too many edibles at a high school reunion to beauty treatments that supposedly fight aging. The most successful essays perfectly balance vulnerability and humor to lead readers to gentle, compassionate insights. While most of the author’s conclusions are not particularly original, her appealing voice keeps the pages turning.

A lighthearted, mostly rewarding, not-particularly-profound collection.