Life Expectancy - by Rachael Maddux (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking meets Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird in this millennial coming-of-age memoir, a wry rumination on growing up mortal in the American South at the turn of the 21st century, obsessed with the question of how to live when you know you're going to die. For fans of Sloane Crosley's Grief Is for People and Maggie O'Farrell's I Am, I Am, I Am.

Review Quotes

"Life Expectancy is a memoir of regular life, but in Rachael Maddux's hands, the pedestrian becomes extraordinary, the personal becomes expansive, and existential dread coexists with agile wit. The care with which she writes about her younger self is so abundant - an invitation to see our past selves in all their foolishness and glory, to love them despite and because. Life Expectancy is an intimate, tender book - never sentimental - and an absolute joy to read."

-Jaime Green, author of The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos

"Very few people are capable of expressing the central confusion of existence with the grace, humor, smarts, and elegance of Rachael Maddux. It's a terrible cliché to say her writing makes me feel less alone, but it does-she's warm but frank, a voice to follow and cherish. I'm so glad she's written this book."

-Amanda Petrusich, author of Do Not Sell at Any Price

"Rachael Maddux writes with tremendous heart, candor, and warmth. Processing grief, heartbreak, and existential anxiety alongside her feels like having a long talk with a friend-communing, commiserating, cracking dark jokes, closing down the bar."

-Anna Wiener, author of Uncanny Valley

"I devoured this memoir in just one day, something I absolutely did not expect. Maddux tells her coming-of-age story while weaving in the theme of death and her anxieties surrounding it throughout. I found this approach both fascinating and innovative, something I have never encountered before. ... There were several moments that genuinely made me laugh out loud, and even more moments where Maddux's beautiful writing made me sob."

-Chiara Bammert, Goodreads