Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful

January 15, 2018
A penetrating story about the author's experience witnessing addiction claim her brother's life.Writer, theater artist, and educator Wachs and her younger brother, Harris Wittels (1984-2015), a comedian best known for his work on Parks and Recreation, were practically inseparable as children, and they grew up to become best friends as adults. So when Harris confessed to being a drug addict three days before the author's wedding, Wachs was understandably devastated. Over the next few years, as Harris battled his addiction and bounced in and out of rehab, the author gave birth to a baby with a permanent hearing disability and was suddenly faced with the emotional stress of worrying about her child's future while simultaneously fearing for her brother's life. Her worst nightmare became a reality when she got a phone call telling her that Harris died of an overdose, alone in his Los Angeles home, just days before he was set to move to New York for a new job. The narrative alternates between stories from before the tragedy--what growing up in the Wittels home was like, how Harris fell in love with comedy and turned it into a career, how Wachs started her own family, how everyone dealt with Harris' addiction--and the author's descriptions of life "after," in which she speaks directly and candidly to her brother about the year that followed. In unflinching detail and with remarkable openness, Wachs describes the ugly and complicated nature of mourning someone who was not only a brother and best friend, but also an addict, a public figure, and a comedic genius whose life was cut off at the very cusp of success. Photos, texts, and correspondences, along with a touching foreword by comedian, actor, and close friend Aziz Ansari, enhance an already rich book.A powerful debut that will resonate especially with readers who have loved and lost someone to addiction.

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April 2, 2018
Wittels Wachs’s first book sweetly but prosaically recounts the months leading up to and following her brother Harris’s 2015 death from a heroin overdose. In her recounting of her brother’s past and his rising success (he was a writer and executive producer for Parks & Recreation), she hopes to find some meaning behind his death. With each chapter, the perspective switches between first-person recounts of Harris’s life and a charming second-person address to Harris (“Visiting the cemetery isn’t a natural urge, but the day before your birthday I force myself to go... It’s also April 19, the two-month anniversary of your death”). Wittels Wachs shares anecdotes, scripts, messages, and letters of Harris’s that display his acceptance of his friends’ foibles: she quotes her brother at his funeral, saying, “‘Let’s stop finding a new witch of the week and burning them at the stake. We are all horrible and wonderful and figuring it out. ” Wittels Wachs can be a little too self-involved, as when she concludes that her brother’s death is a personal affront (“It all... feels like a punishment for some transgression in a past life”). Nevertheless, the story itself is a well-intentioned, honestly told one of love for and loss of an exceptional person.

Starred review from February 1, 2018
Comedian Harris Wittels, the author's younger brother, was only 30 when he tragically succumbed to opioid addiction. In this harrowing, heartbreaking, and cathartic memoir, Wachs recounts the ways her little brother lit up the world. Written as a love letter or a eulogy for Harris himself to hear, the book alternates between the periods immediately before and after his horrific overdose in 2015. Wachs was a newlywed then, raising a two-year-old and teaching theater at the high school she and her brother had both attended. Wachs examines how Harris unraveled just as she was coming into her own and meditates on the difficulty of helping a high-functioning addict. Harris' dependency on painkillers and later heroin coincided with his major career success as an executive producer of Parks and Recreation. Harris was beloved by peers and audiences alike as his family prayed for his survival. Exploring her brother's untimely death while continuing his legacy, Wachs writes with immense love, humor, and humanity. The title references a famous Harris Wittels witticism, one that fits the excruciating reality of loving an addict. Everything about this book is horrible, wonderful, timely, and not to be missed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)