Tell Everyone on This Train I Love Them

November 8, 2021
Irish comedian Higgins (Maeve in America) reveals her serious side in this probing if uneven reflection on such contemporary concerns as pandemic isolation, racism, police brutality, and climate change. In “Misneach and Rumors of War,” Higgins visits the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, Va., after becoming perplexed by American conservatism, and compares debates over removing the statue to the IRA’s destruction of Irish monuments. In “Situational Awareness,” she visits the 2020 Border Security Expo in San Antonio, Tex., where “tequila flowed” and “suited men with buzz cuts” were “clapping each other on the back,” while “Bubbles and Planks” sees her stoned on cannabis-laced chocolates, after which she interrogates a chocolatier: “I want to know about consciousness and whether or not my mind is all I am.... Is that too much to ask some guy in a kitchen mixing weed with lychee fruit juice and vegan gelatin alternatives?” Along the way, she offers scattershot reflections on her battle with mental illness, the ups and downs of her career, and her credit card debt (“I owed Chase thousands of truly unnecessary dollars because my credit card had a mind of her own!”). Higgins is an accomplished writer, but there’s a hodgepodge feeling to this collection that saps the energy from it. Readers unacquainted with Higgins’s work may struggle to get on board.

November 15, 2021
An Irish-born, New York-based comedian gets serious about her life experiences in early-21st-century America. Higgins begins her latest essay collection by reflecting on pandemic loneliness and hoping "that it not impart any damn lessons. I can't stand when horrible and senseless things happen and people insist on finding some neat takeaway to make sense of it all." This darkly humorous observation sets the tone for the difficult topics she discusses throughout the book, such as her battle with "great waves of anxiety and depression." The author couches discussions of mental health in a story of getting so high on THC-laced candy that she feared she had lost her mind. As frightening as the misadventure was, it made Higgins realize that in the U.S., she had found the freedom, unavailable to her in Ireland, to treat depression as "just a fact of life." Being an immigrant granted other perks, as well, like the ability to see the racial subjugation and White supremacy issues underlying the controversy surrounding Confederate statues. She also demonstrates profound empathy for undocumented Mexican immigrants who have experienced the "increasingly draconian treatment" of U.S. border patrol agents. Reflecting on her own easy ability to cross borders and seek American citizenship as a White, middle-class European woman of ambition, she writes, "how free am I when others aren't free at all?" While Higgins understands how much she has benefited from being in the U.S., she is also critical of the American hypercapitalism that not only led to the rise of Donald Trump, but continues to "deplete everything around me" and push the planet into a devastating climate crisis. The author's fans may find the humor in this book more subdued than in her past work, but for those willing to venture into the realms of cultural critique, her essays are both timely and rewarding. Intelligent reading filled with candor and sympathy.

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Starred review from January 1, 2022
While her previous book was titled Maeve in America (2018), it's in this newest outing that Higgins really delves into the bones of America as a country of contrasts, the bad along with the good. These essays also form a travelogue of sorts. She visits Confederate memorials in Richmond, Virginia; she travels to Texas to attend a Border Security Expo; and of course, she spends plenty of time ruminating on her two homes--Ireland, where she is from, and New York City. As an immigrant and self-proclaimed outsider, she can see what America is, but also what it could be. Higgins' trips aren't simply voyeurism or made with an intent to mock; she genuinely wants to understand those with different viewpoints than her own, succeeding more with some than others--at the Border Security Expo, for example, she finds it difficult to see past jingoism to any deeper understanding of border security, but the farcical idea of an immigrant hiding in plain sight among the attendees is vastly amusing to her. A must-read for Higgins fans, and a perfect introduction for newcomers. Hand this to readers who like Sarah Vowell's humorous travelogues or the tart essays of David Sedaris.

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