Rachel Shukert

Nothing is more embarrassing than reading this book while on a bus with 33 of your coworkers and laughing so hard you snort, only to be asked what you were laughing so hard about and explaining as quietly as possible that you were laughing at a description of the author performing fellatio on an older Austrian gentleman when, to her surprise, she is face to face with an uncircumcised penis.

Actually, come to think of it, even more embarrassing is explaining all of this to your mother — I had the pleasure of doing this as I sat on my parent’s couch reading and feeding my niece. Thankfully my niece is only three months old and cannot read because she is not old enough to know about these things. Neither are my sisters — I would like to inquire about chastity belts forged with the strongest irons in the world so if anyone has information about this, please put me in touch with the right people.

Rachel Shukert’s memoir, Everything Is Going To Be Great: An Underfunded & Overexposed European Grand Tour is one of the most hilarious memoirs, actually books, I have ever read. I can’t say that my European escapades were ever worthy of writing a book about them, but I can relate to ending up in the hospital in a foreign country because one has consumed too much alcohol. I still haven’t figured out if I was in a hospital or if I made that whole thing up and actually spent the night in an alley. Regardless of my hazy memory, Rachel recreates her adventures with witty, self-deprecating humor — my favorite kind.

Graduating college and moving on to the “next big thing” in your life is a scary process. Finding a job, becoming an adult; these are things we think about but once we are forced into these situations — we try to delay this as long as possible — we often make some bad decisions. Rachel takes us on her journey post-college as she finds a non-paying acting gig and touring Europe with the play in a non-speaking role. She offers up anecdotes from her college years, pre-college years, all the while her mother calls and writes to kvetch — if there was a kvetching award, her mother would probably win.

The stories in Everything Is Going To Be Great are hilarious and memorable. Beyond this, Shukert lets us know that making mistakes is okay and that we can still survive if we make them — our lives don’t have to be perfect in order to work out.

This is Shukert’s second memoir — she isn’t even 30 (get on it slackers) — and is quickly becoming one of my favorite memoirists. She has written pieces for McSweeney’s and The Daily Beast and I caught her contribution to the WSJ site about [b:Eat, Pray, Love|19501|Eat, Pray, Love|Elizabeth Gilbert|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1269870432s/19501.jpg|3352398].

Have any of you read this? If not, I highly suggest you do. She’s like the female version of David Sedaris if you added in Judaism and more sex.… (mehr)