The Worrier's Guide to the End of the World

September 15, 2017
Growing up, DeRoche (Love with a Chance of Drowning, 2013) constantly imagined worst-case scenarios, straight out of her screenwriter-father Everett's horror films, to the point of an anxiety disorder. After her father's death and the end of a longtime relationship, DeRoche's anxiety and depression raging, her friend Masha, who's on a year-long pilgrimage, invites DeRoche to join her in Italy. Though physically demanding, the Italian countryside is beautiful and generous, full of fruit trees for snacking and random nonnas who cook for them. Months later, DeRoche rejoins Masha to trace Gandhi's Salt March in India. This walk is mostly through industrial areas where dirt is ubiquitous and food scarce, conditions that test the women's relationship. But each journey provides valuable lessons about embracing the unexpected and releasing control. DeRoche's writing is conversational and her humor, in shades of black, is copious. This page-turning memoir is a thoughtful and entertaining addition to the minigenre of grief-induced travelogues like Cheryl Strayed's Wild (2012) and Shannon Leone Fowler's Traveling with Ghosts (2017).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)