A moving adrenaline rush that also manages to be very funny ... I cried more than once reading it ... The novel’s prose sometimes strains to capture the intensity of her perspective ... While Pattee’s readers will not get the answer to every question, at the end Annie will have an answer of her own: All that matters is this ferocious creature she is becoming — a mother, prepared to do whatever she must.
Pattee can focus on this negativity to, well, a fault. Annie’s sourness runs counter to the moments of generosity she’s afforded; there are a couple of only-in-a-novel coincidences that test the reader’s trust. And though Pattee is careful not to have Annie wallow in abject self-pity, she does occasionally lapse into morose platitudes. Still, the storytelling in Tilt is brisk, and Annie has, in the moments when she can afford it, a winning gallows humor — this is probably as funny as a novel about humanity at its worst can be.
Pattee brings her expertise as a climate journalist to this remarkable debut, examining how we question our lives when the earth takes control. Ultimately, Tilt is fascinating, haunting and surprising at every turn.
Offers a devastating and funny, wrenching yet hopeful portrait of motherhood and marriage in the near-apocalyptic context of environmental devastation.
Recounting Annie’s precarious journey across the city and into her past, Pattee reveals that the quake has upended more than the earth. A captivating novel.
