Which is why it shouldn't have surprised me when I turned to page 277 and found a six- page interview with my grandmother in California. I identify more with Horn and her couch than with my tireless Gram, and since I had been enjoying the book before I was aware of the extent of my personal connection to it, I feel I can review it with a clear conscience. Stacy Horn is in her early 40s, lives alone with her cats, has a failing business and suffers regular panic attacks. She owns a book of transcriptions of in-flight recordings from plane crashes and seems to be setting out to write her own chronicle of spiraling descent. There must be something wrong with me.
Horn writes in short chapters and short sentences that come at a breakneck speed.
She also sings in a choir and wonders about the best way to survive an oncoming subway car. By the time you finish her book, you feel that you have gotten to know the character that is Stacy Horn. She fantasizes about making a retirement home for herself and her friends on Coney Island, worries about the unhappy ghost in her apartment and tends the graves at forgotten cemeteries. What is so appealing about Horn is the way she gets interested in something and veers off to learn about it. She frets over the boxes of unclaimed ashes that lie in funeral homes and befriends a sweet mortician in the process of looking into the problem.