I Want to Burn This Place Down: Essays

Lit Hub columnist Kreizman (Slaughterhouse 90210) bucks the stereotypical trend of growing more conservative with age in this fierce and witty collection. Across the essays, Kreizman finds that “in a country plagued by problems in which individual grit is not nearly enough to prevail over rotten systems, working hard begins to feel more like a Sisyphean task than a practical solution.” In “She’s Lost Control Again,” the author describes her increasing disillusionment with America’s healthcare system as she got older and her efforts to finance strangers’ insulin bills on GoFundMe. In “I Wanna Be Rich,” she outlines the decline of the New York City department store Barneys (founded by her great-great-uncle), where employee welfare “began to seem like an afterthought” before the store went bankrupt and was “sold off for parts” in 2019. “Copaganda and Me” finds Kreizman considering how TV shows and films from the 1980s and ’90s “unceasingly told us that the police would bravely save the day no matter what was wrong, and they would also look cool doing it.” Kreizman tempers her anger with wryness and lots of Xennial nostalgia, and while her viewpoint is firmly on the left, many of her frustrations at the failures of the neoliberal status quo will resonate across the political spectrum. These sharp and entertaining essays deliver the goods. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Co. (July)