By Lisa Boss, Grand Rapids Public Library, Main Branch

“Fourteen years ago, I was stabbed in the throat. This is kind of a long story and less interesting than it sounds…”

Ack! Quite an opening…

So, the author’s humor can be a bit dark at times as he illustrates a wide selection of intriguing people, unusual situations, and their moral ambiguities. Cartoons compliment the essays, adding unusual layers. The tone is deeply funny, but in a compassionate way, as he tears into the foibles of human nature. Oddly, with each chapter I felt I liked people more — that in life it isn’t so much “how could this happen?”, but as he wonders, “why doesn’t this happen all the time?”

Like the NASA astronaut who drove cross-country in a diaper to confront and dispatch her rival. Initially, the author’s “unhealthy empathy” for her, seems farfetched. But as he leads us along, revealing more and more similarities to our own lives, we’re willing to agree that in some way, “We’ve all worn the diaper.”

Kreider says, “turning pain into laughter is my job, and it’s the best you can do sometimes, but it’s a sad impotent sort of solace…”. He does more though, in these thoughtful essays, by revealing the thinness of the line between us and them.

It could be the Mennonite upbringing, but for a man who tries for a secular outlook, he seems grounded in “family values”. Proustian themes of time, community, and family, are the backbone of his writing, and the question of how can we truly “know” anyone, even ourselves.