Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful: A Tragicomic Memoir of Genius, Heroin, Love, and Loss

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. (Mar.)