One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

Starred review from March 13, 2017
Simultaneously uproarious and affecting, the personal essays in Buzzfeed contributor Koul’s debut explore the nuances of life as a first-generation Canadian with Indian parents, from phobias, guilt trips, and grudges to the drama of interracial dating. She provides insight into the experience of traveling to her parents’ homeland, undergoing the inverse of their assimilation, and the conflicting desire to maintain and amend cultural traditions (for example, she dislikes weeklong wedding celebrations with alcohol restrictions). She discerns the “shadism” of India’s caste system and its more benign cultural quirks, like every woman being given the title of “aunt” (“Mom, why do you have forty sisters? Was your mother a sea turtle?”). There is an occasional essay of sheer slapstick, as when Koul describes getting stuck inside a coveted garment in a boutique dressing room (“I flew too close to the sun with this skirt,” she remarks sadly), but she also reflects poignantly on race, sexism, and body image issues. She includes a surprisingly sympathetic judgment of misogynist internet trolls and a polemic against rape culture that contains the unfortunate phrase “the first time I was roofied.” The specifics of Koul’s life are unique, but the overarching theme of inheritance is universal, particularly the vacillation between struggling against becoming one’s parents and the begrudging acceptance that their ways might not be so bad. Koul’s deft humor is a fringe benefit. Agent: Ron Eckel, Cooke Agency.

March 1, 2017
A debut collection of essays by a BuzzFeed Canada senior writer.Canadian journalist Koul writes about all manner of things, ranging from her family's Indian culture to race and gender issues. Her essays are sporadically funny and often touching, but occasionally they feel insubstantial. The opening essay, "Inheritance Tax," is a meditation on fear, family, and mutual protectiveness. "Size Me Up" is a David Sedaris-esque story about shopping. "If you are a woman reading this, you know this to be true: the possibility of getting stuck in a garment at a store where the employees have to cut you out of it is the beginning of the end of your life," writes the author. "It's like the saddest version of a C-section, where the baby is just a half-naked lady with no dignity." The book is heavily weighted toward stories about Koul's family--interstitial segments relay wry text messages between the author and her father--and her boyfriend, "Hamhock," a "sweet, precious moron." The author occasionally delves into more serious territory, writing about cultural racism in "Fair and Lovely" and delivering a biting essay on drinking and rape culture in "Hunting Season." The focal point of the collection is "Mute," an essay that relates the incident for which the author is most well-known, for better or worse. It details how serial Tweeter Koul managed to enrage the internet into Gamergate-level backlash by stating she would like to see more articles by nonwhite, nonmale writers, spurring rape and death threats. It's a terrifying story, but Koul's conclusions are less reflective than understandably defensive. "It's no wonder I keep fighting with riff-raff on the internet," she writes. "I'm expecting human interaction, and all they're offering are beeps. I was dumb enough to want a hug from a machine." An uneven introduction to an iconoclast whose voice will likely resonate with a specific generation.

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January 1, 2018

This debut collection of essays from BuzzFeed writer Koul is at once insanely funny and vulnerable. Koul discusses her Indian family and her break from their social norms (as when she introduced her parents to her boyfriend, who was white) and prejudice encountered both in her Indian culture and her life in Toronto, among many other anecdotes about womanhood, fears, gender roles, and positive body image. In one memorable entry, the author talks about how lighter skin is prized in India. Koul, who is fair-skinned, is revered for her beauty in India, but she discusses how in Canada the color of her skin matters in a different way. She says, "I'm not white...but I'm just close enough that I could be, and just far enough that you know I'm not. I can check off a diversity box for you, but I don't make you nervous." She injects her blunt outlooks on life with hilarity. Koul's work for BuzzFeed give this volume added YA appeal. VERDICT An extremely teen-friendly series of writings on important subjects.-Tyler Hixson, Brooklyn Public Library

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2017
Koul, a senior staffer at Buzzfeed Canada who's written for the New Yorker and Jezebel, was raised in Alberta by Kashmiri immigrant parents, and her first book of essays is inherently influenced by this fact of her existence. As an adult in her family's ancestral land, she understands shadismthe not-oft-discussed prejudice based on the darkness of one's brown skindifferently and more uncomfortably than before. A recent month off drinking recalls a college best-friendship derailed by her friend's knack for fun becoming full-blown alcoholism before her eyes. Unveiling the double standards that exist for her both as a woman in her family (moving in with her much-older boyfriend prompts months of anger from her father) and a woman of color in the world, Koul is funny and generous in sharing, and blissfully not in the business of cutting slack. Her most emotional writing centers on her simultaneously infuriating, difficult, and fiercely loving parents. Like all great essayists, Koul will inform and entertain both those who already identify with her and those who don't yet.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)