Book It!: Everything Is Going To Be Great by Rachel Shukert

Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour by Rachel Shukert

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Rachel Shukert has a unique gift. It's not her talent for writing which is remarkably smart and witty, nor her skill in theater. It's her exceptional perception of herself and her ability to keenly expose both the admirable and the despicable aspects of herself. That she does so without the use of apologies and without a shred of youthful conceit gives her memoir, Everything Is Going to Be Great another leg up.

Both happenstance and serendipity find Rachel living in Europe. An unstamped passport allows her the freedom to settle down, in what she insists is not an exercise in “finding herself” (spoiler: it totally is an exercise in finding herself) Part confessional, part travelogue, all acerbic, Everything Is Going to Be Great is more than what you expect for a memoir by someone so young (it’s her SECOND! And she’s under 30!)and chock full of more information about Rachel than you could possibly ever need. She leaves no blemish concealed.


For every misguided decision that made me shake my head and click my tongue, there were other time when I mentally applauded Rachel for her ability to be so forthcoming. Once, when her college provided psychiatrist suggested that perhaps she was afraid of her own success, after Rachel cast out a rather detailed list of some loathsome traits, she said:

Here is a list of things I am afraid of: elephants flying, terrorists, sexually transmitted diseases, credit card statements, Poles, ballet teachers, and failure, which is generally agreed to be the opposite of success. Unless you’re trying to practice some sort of reverse psychology on me, in which case you can go and fuck yourself.

Go fuck yourself, indeed.


In addition to exposing more than an eHarmony profiles worth of details, Everything Is Going to Be Great will also teach you a thing or two. Scattered throughout the book are self help segments and tasty morsels of humor, their additions like natural tangents to the conversation you are rapt in, small asides to Rachel’s tales of love and woe and “whoa no’s!"

Foreskin FAQs
Snappy Comebacks to Loaded Questions
Where the Fuck Am I? A Guide to Dutch Street Names
More Sinterklass Poems to Share and Love

Never one to hog the spotlight (well, maybe sometimes) Rachel fills the pages of her memoir with fascinating characters. Mattijs, who shares his home with her in Amsterdam, who believes that one of his neighbors cancer is in fact “a cancer of the soul.” Herr Winkler, the curt desk clerk in Vienna who disapproves of Berthold, the fatherly figure who teachers Rachel the proper way to eat schnitzel. Hattie, who asked Rachel to keep her company at the abortion clinic because all the magazines were in Dutch. And Pete, the nearly married man whose sociopath romantic tendencies are a catalyst for Rachel, emotionally and physically.


I can hear you asking already “But does it end well?” and yes, of course it does. It’s a happy-go-lucky ending for everyone except the reader, who is left wishing they had friends like Rachel to remind them that everything is going to be great.

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