Book Review: Tilt by Emma Pattee

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“Nobody wants to be where they are, I think. So would it really matter so much if the earth swallowed us all?”

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Annie is 37 weeks pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a devastating earthquake (“The Big One”) hits the east coast, devolving her surroundings into chaos. With no transportation, money, phone, or means of reaching her husband, she’s forced to traverse Portland’s wreckage on foot. Throughout her day-long walk, she experiences kindness, desperation, cruelty, tragedy, friendship, and violence. She also reflects on her underwhelming career, troubled marriage, and misgivings about becoming a mother, all of which solidify her determination to turn everything around, if she can only make it safely home.

Tilt’s stark realism constructs a jaw-dropping, heart-pounding, sky-high-stakes odyssey that opens as a taut rubber band gradually stretching to breakpoint. The storyline expertly moves back and forth between “then” and “now,” filling in Annie’s backstory as she navigates Portland’s ruins, producing an anxiety-inducing, utterly terrifying premise conveyed by a narrative equal parts powerful and immersive, gorgeous and elegant, horrific and gripping — a tale of female distress and vulnerability in the midst of an extreme apocalyptic scenario full of bedlam and blood, panic and dread.

Much more than a natural disaster account, Tilt is an examination of hopes, ambitions, fears, and disappointments; chance, control, circumstance, and normalcy; relationships, autonomy, betrayal, and lies; and mortality, loss, failure, and grief of the rawest, truest kind: for what could have been and will never be, for people and bonds lost, and for time and aptitude squandered. It’s an exploration of the boundless essence of nature, existence, and mankind — at once callous and giving, brutal and caring, thoughtful and selfish, merciful and animalistic — and the frustration and difficulty in realizing potential in a sea of humans who yearn to do the same, and who endure daily drudgery and waste their limited years at the expense of following their dreams. It’s about the brief flickers of our lives, the echoes we leave behind (memories, items, feelings), the routine habit of putting things off until it’s too late, and the human spirit’s extraordinary capacity for hope and perseverance, even in the face of impending demise.

How do we determine what’s really important, find value and substance in what is instead of what we believe we need and want, in what we think reality should be? What equates to happiness, fills the void, and makes us feel complete? When does a refusal to give up, let go, and move on cross the line into obstinacy? When is something good enough, and how do we reconcile desire with actuality and keep going (in life, in search of fulfillment, loved ones, safety, water, and food)? In Annie’s case, she puts one foot in front of the other, and she walks — while facing truth and fear, depression and resentment, doubt and anxiety, and the angst of being alone, of endings and beginnings, losses that overwhelm gains, and an imminent future filled with seemingly insurmountable challenges.

In short, this novel is a phenomenal, frenetic, unforgettable page-turner readers will be hard-pressed to put down, and from which they won’t be able to look away. It’s emotional and visceral, difficult and incredible, and it will easily be a yearly and all-time favorite for this reader.

🖤Amanda

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