How to Leave: Quitting the City and Coping with a New Reality

Well-proofed literate writing evoked my what-happens-next reflex often enough to draw me through the entire book.

Some evocative observations: “I discovered that in Wisconsin, zucchini grows like the plague. It’s basically the Ebola of squash.” Such are the insights we receive into the interpersonal dynamics of smaller communities.

Having made nice, some features made my read difficult. Telling and glossing over rather than showing abounds, particularly when leading chapters dismiss relationships. The words s..t and f..k and M……..r appear too often. If reflecting the in-talk of the New York cognoscenti, it is no damned wonder they have difficulty relocating! Even as a former Marine Sergeant, I cannot recall hearing such persistent coarseness before. The author even concedes the shock effect of her language in amused reaction to differing verbal standards but persists in her imitation of an adjective-deprived street punk.

The perpetual bewailing of lost inner-city bustle and diversity (the scarcity of gay bars is lamented) becomes…tiring. Personalities from entertainment and, apparently literature that I’ve never heard of, are cited. I’ve had a much more limited leisure, social, and educational life than the writer and have never had a therapist, so apparently I lack an entire realm of emotional perception.

Big city patronizing elitism recurs regularly. The behaviors attributed to superior New York denizens, from line cutting both personally and vehicularly to tolerance for unending noise and filth, give good reasons never to visit that pit of human stress.