Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Memoir of a year in the author's own existential book club as she grapples with huge familial loss
Anne Gisleson's adult life was gouged with crises, from the suicide of two twin sisters within two years, to the devastating wake of Hurricane Katrina, when her friend Chris proposed a philosophical exploration. Bound by the limits of adulthood responsibilities and time, Anne agreed on the condition of it being a group social venture. With no shortage of friends in need of some existential guidance and reassurance, Anne and Chris launched the Existential Crisis Reading Group.
From Epicurus to Cheever to Tolstoy to Lispector, each chapter in THE FUTILITARIANS represents the text chosen for the month in a year of discussion. When Anne's dad dies within weeks of the group's first meeting, the gatherings take on an added importance, and Anne credits the monthly meeting for shaping the way she experiences her father's death, and all the issues that spiraled out of it: identity, mortality, parenting, growing up and living in New Orleans, a "walled city" of its own, and especially her finally grappling with the deaths of her sisters.
THE FUTILITARIANS is a memoir by a woman deeply committed to exploring questions of human existence, not alone, but with her adult friends. It is a guide to living curiously and fully, and ultimately asks us "How do we keep moving forward amid all this loss and threat?" Anne tells us: "One answer is, we do it together."
Synopsis
A memoir of friendship and literature chronicling a search for meaning and comfort in great books, and a beautiful path out of grief
Anne Gisleson had lost her twin sisters, had been forced to flee her home during Hurricane Katrina, and had witnessed cancer take her beloved father. Before she met her husband, Brad, he had suffered his own trauma, losing his partner and the mother of his son to cancer in her young thirties. "How do we keep moving forward," Anne asks, "amid all this loss and threat?" The answer: "We do it together."
Anne and Brad, in the midst of forging their happiness, found that their friends had been suffering their own losses and crises as well: loved ones gone, rocky marriages, tricky childrearing, jobs lost or gained, financial insecurities or unexpected windfalls. Together these resilient New Orleanians formed what they called the Existential Crisis Reading Group, jokingly dubbed "The Futilitarians." From Epicurus to Tolstoy, from Cheever to Amis to Lispector, each month they read and talked about identity, parenting, love, mortality, and life in post-Katrina New Orleans, gatherings that increasingly fortified Anne and helped her blaze a trail out of her well-worn grief. Written with wisdom, soul, and a playful sense of humor, The Futilitarians is a guide to living curiously and fully, and a testament to the way that even from the toughest soil of sorrow, beauty and wonder can bloom.
Synopsis
Recommended Summer Reading -- Louise Erdrich, New York Times
A memoir of friendship and literature chronicling a search for meaning and comfort in great books, and a beautiful path out of grief Anne Gisleson had lost her twin sisters, had been forced to flee her home during Hurricane Katrina, and had witnessed cancer take her beloved father. Before she met her husband, Brad, he had suffered his own trauma, losing his partner and the mother of his son to cancer in her young thirties. "How do we keep moving forward," Anne asks, "amid all this loss and threat?" The answer: "We do it together."
Anne and Brad, in the midst of forging their happiness, found that their friends had been suffering their own losses and crises as well: loved ones gone, rocky marriages, tricky childrearing, jobs lost or gained, financial insecurities or unexpected windfalls. Together these resilient New Orleanians formed what they called the Existential Crisis Reading Group, jokingly dubbed "The Futilitarians." From Epicurus to Tolstoy, from Cheever to Amis to Lispector, each month they read and talked about identity, parenting, love, mortality, and life in post-Katrina New Orleans, gatherings that increasingly fortified Anne and helped her blaze a trail out of her well-worn grief. Written with wisdom, soul, and a playful sense of humor, The Futilitarians is a guide to living curiously and fully, and a testament to the way that even from the toughest soil of sorrow, beauty and wonder can bloom.