Review of Tilt by Emma Pattee

After a devastating earthquake, nine-months-pregnant Annie desperately searches the city of Portland, Oregon, for her husband. Pattee alternates the immediacy of the crisis with various moments preceding the devastation, including earlier, now quaint-feeling worries about money, fulfillment, and love.

Annie is nine months pregnant and finally getting around to choosing a crib at IKEA when a devastating earthquake hits Portland, Oregon.

The story alternates between the present-day crisis, with mass destruction, frantic, often hurt citizens, and Annie's own worried, dangerous slog across town to find her husband; and imperfect moments in the past that lead up to the morning before the quake.

Pattee places Annie's periodic, sometimes steady dissatisfaction with her life in the months leading up to this fateful day against the immediacy of urgent needs: wanting to see her husband again, protecting her unborn baby, and the struggle of simply trying to survive. The past concerns of fulfillment and fears around financial security feel grotesque when set alongside the life-and-death crisis she finds herself--and her unborn baby--living within.

She was a promising young playwright, but life got in the way, cost of living pressures led her to find an unsatisfying office job, she fell into marriage for health-insurance convenience, her husband is still searching for his acting break and working in a coffee shop, and now she's facing life with a baby and a more uncertain financial future than ever.

Much of the book centers around Annie's relatively recent regrets and irritations, and as a reader I was left wondering if much of it was driven by hormones and strong emotions, or whether Annie had been considering a break from her spouse. While I have sympathy for her situation, in which she looks around and is in her 30s and life is not what she had imagined it would be, I became impatient with and fairly unsympathetic regarding the heavy grumbling around the decisions she actively made, her inertia, and her procrastination.

I'm typically fascinated by a post-apocalyptic setting for a story, and the earthquake in the story is so disruptive, so destructive, it alters the landscape in a horrifyingly dramatic manner. Some buildings and landmarks are flattened, others still standing. People are dazed, they are often wandering without cars or phones, and they're desperate to find their loved ones. In a situation like that, people determine what they're made of, what they're capable of, what they must to do survive--and to stay human and be part of a society.

Annie's quest across the city--with all of its missteps, tragedies, frightening encounters, and heartwarming moments--is the highlight of the novel for me.

More about Emma Pattee

Emma Pattee is a climate journalist as well as a fiction writer. She notes that there is a 37% chance of a massive earthquake in the Pacific Northwest in the next 50 years, and that it would be one of the biggest natural disasters in North American history. This chilling possibility was her inspiration for this novel.