Tilt by Emma Pattee: book review
Overview: Annie is standing in the crib section of the Ikea warehouse when the big earthquake hits. It destroys the city around her. She has no purse, no phone, no car, and she's about to have a baby any day. The novel follows Annie as she attempts to reconnect with her husband who is on the other side of Portland. She learns about herself, disaster, the bonds you can quickly form with others, and her altered perspective on motherhood. Overall: 4.5
Characters: 5 Annie is an interesting character, somewhat filtered by the idea that she's telling the book not as a running inner monologue but in speaking to her unborn child. An unborn child she, admittedly, has mixed feelings about. Annie is an artist who never got to fully realize her dreams despite throwing herself headfirst into them. She feels backed into a corner by life, and suddenly, the earthquake cracks her world open and makes her reevaluate. Annie is not in a very happy spot at the beginning of the book, and she's bluntly honest about how many mixed feelings she has about her future. She isn't sold on being a mother, and she's honest about that. Her marriage mostly came out of insurance needs and stasis. She's the partner who's put herself aside, and it's left her in kind of an angry spot that gives her a really unique voice. She's also dealing with grief from her mother's unexpected COVID death before anyone knew the pandemic was happening. Annie's life has been marred by disaster around almost every turn. Her blunt honesty is refreshing, but it's also a little jarring. It makes for a really interesting character with a very particular, of the moment feeling world view.
The other characters flit through the novel in brief cuts. Dom is realized in flashbacks that build out Annie's life before the earthquake. In their relationship, he got to keep chasing his dreams when she had to become the responsible one. She carries every burden in their relationship to let him fly, and that obviously creates fissures in their relationship. It's interesting to see that chart over the years. And it's an interesting commentary on how men are much more often allowed to not grow up. We also meet a young woman who works at Ikea who Annie crosses paths with throughout the disaster time. We learn bits and pieces about her as the book progresses, but they are bonded by disaster. Then Annie's mom looms large over the book and their complicated relationship that both impending motherhood and the disaster bring to light.
Plot: 5 The book moves fast and is so hard to put down. The chapters are fast and alternate between the disaster and Annie's life prior. Pattee does a fantastic job of weaving together both narratives so that the past tempers the anxiety of the present but also propels itself in the interesting character dynamics. The love story between Annie and Dom is so quiet and nuanced that I was as interested in seeing that unfold in the flashbacks as I was in reading the present time. I don't love disaster books or things that are gory and disturbing, and Pattee does a great job of keeping it very small, very personal, very human. There are scenes that made me flinch but also seemingly an awareness of not making the disaster something to rubberneck. It is the backdrop for Annie's crisis. Suddenly, her internal disaster is matched by her physical world, and what does that facilitate?
In a lot of ways, this book reminded me of Severance by Ling Ma in the near term disaster story that's also very literary and accessible to those that don't usually read dystopia or action flavored books.
Writing: 4 I think I really do like what Pattee did, but I'll say that the entire book being told in direct address to her unborn child really threw me off a little. I don't love books about pregnancy or where the character becomes pregnant. Just a personal thing. So this book was already starting a hundred leagues behind because it's very much a book about being pregnant and trying to figure out how to feel about it. But I clearly found it hard to put down and deeply compelling, so Pattee is doing a lot right. There's a vividness and a forward motion that is undeniable, and I'm thoroughly captivated by what Pattee has done with the story and the way she's balanced writing a deeply character driven story with such a massive hook that doesn't subsume it. That takes skill. This is a weird one for me. An intense read, a fascinating read, emotionally charged, interesting, but also repelling in some ways.
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