The Wishing Year

May 26, 2008
The year she turned 50, Oxenhandler (The Eros of Parenthood
) deeply longed for three things: a house, a man and spiritual healing. This memoir tells of her 12-month attempt to fulfill these longings while reflecting on “the quintessentially human act of wishing,” with all its power and pitfalls. She goes house hunting, visits places of spiritual sanctuary and nurtures a new relationship—all while struggling to overcome her tendency to be a “terrible wish snob” who balks at the notion of voicing worldly and altruistic wishes together in the same breath, of mixing the profane and the divine more generally. She considers wishing in its broader contexts: mythology, American history, folktales, theology, superstition, philosophy, New Age and psychology. Her philosophy/religious-studies education, guilt-prone sensibility (she's half-Jewish and was raised Catholic) and 30-year history as a practicing Buddhist complicate her careful study and make for a smart read. Oxenhandler does little to resolve or even fully explore the crises that set her on her quest (seven years earlier, an affair ended her marriage as well as her place in her spiritual community), and her pat conclusions hardly match the strength of the work as a whole. Nonetheless, readers will enjoy watching Oxenhandler realize her dreams through diligence, hard work and a “willing suspension of disbelief” in the captivating magic of wishing.

May 1, 2008
Oxenhandler, whose essays have been published in "The New Yorker" and the "New York Times Magazine", knew the time had come to make changes in her life. While she understood intellectually that life is change, she also feared that change might set the universe into some kind of weird motion she couldn't control. For this memoir, Oxenhandler researched anything and everything having to do with wishing, from the ancients' ideas on wishful thinking to current notions on the "laws of attraction." She writes of how, despite her doubts, she eventually realized her wishesfor a healed soul, a new love, and, more tangibly, the two-bedroom/one-and-a-half-bath house of her dreamsand how she moved on from there. The ways in which her wishes came true make for both joyful and humorous reading. Those who enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" or Oxenhandler's earlier works, "A Grief Out of Season" and "The Eros of Parenthood", will want this title. Recommended for all libraries with large collections of popular reading. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 3/1/08.]Pam Kingsbury, Univ. of North Alabama, Florence

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2008
Are wishes mere childs play, or "does a wish have power?" Finding herself alone and unmoored after passion laid waste to her marriage and her California Zen Buddhist community, Oxenhandler decided to conduct a personal inquiry into the art and consequences of serious wishing. She chronicles her surprising findings in12 scintillating chapters that mark a year spent wishing for a man, a house of her own, and spiritual healing. A writer of unusual perspectives, ruminating habits of thought, practiced skepticism, and pirouetting prose, Oxenhandler delves into the realms of magic, spirituality, philosophy, and psychology as she analyzes her reluctance to wish for money or material things; excavates the meanings of archetypal figures, symbols, and rituals; explores dreams and mind-over-matter belief systems; portrays a constellation of amazingly intuitive and plucky individuals; dissects self-help books; and attempts to understand a series of astonishing coincidences and spectacular good fortune. In a charmingly self-deprecating and anecdotal mix of the everyday ups-and-downs of a postdivorce recalibration and profound questions of purpose and desire, Oxenhandler offers a stimulating take on the mysterious workings of the universe. This just may hit it big like Elizabeth Gilberts Eat, Pray, Love (2006).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)