Today’s review is about TILT by Emma Pattee. It’s a contemporary fiction that occurs in Portland, Oregon, during a massive earthquake.
Author: Emma Pattee
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Publisher: Scribner
Publish Date: March 25, 2025
Print Length: 229
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Tilt Synopsis
Synopsis
Set over the course of a single day, an electrifying debut novel from “a powerful new literary voice” (Vogue) following one woman’s journey across a transformed city, carrying the weight of her past and a fervent hope for the future.
“Utterly gripping.” —NPR, All Things Considered
Last night, you and I were safe. Last night, in another universe, your father and I stood fighting in the kitchen.
Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there’s nothing to do but walk.
Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she’s determined to change her life.
Tilt Review
TILT by Emma Pattee is a contemporary fiction set in Portland, Oregon. Annie is in her mid-30s, nine months pregnant, and in IKEA when a massive earthquake hits. Everything is chaos and she has no phone or car, so she walks across Portland to try and reach her husband. Along the way she reflects about her marriage, her mom, career disappointment, and anxiety about having a kid.
Annie tells the story to her in utero baby as she walks the few miles toward her husband. The first third of the book occurs in IKEA where Annie tries to buy a crib. The earthquake threw that plan out the window and the rest of the IKEA experience is about Annie making her way out of the building. She encounters plenty of destruction and people with varying degrees of injury. Sometimes she encounters help, but most of the time she’s on her own.
The narrative style is easy to get into and follow. I thought the trains of thoughts Annie had while walking through the city were interesting. Many of them had nothing to do with the earthquake, which I think goes to show that the brain can’t handle all that destruction at once. And also that even with all of the chaos, there are still other things that might intrude in one’s thoughts. Annie recognizes this and wryly comments at least once that she doesn’t know why she’s thinking about such things at the end of the world.
A central topic in this book is whether to keep following your dream career, even if one’s big break still hasn’t come. Annie and her husband met when she was directing a play she wrote. Despite Dom’s talent, he never gets a big break and Annie has to work the boring, corporate job to make ends meet. Her exhaustion with years of going nowhere is evident throughout the story. Annie also has repressed trauma about the sudden passing of her mother in the recent past. Annie’s reminiscing reveals the significance of the bird on the cover and I teared up a bit.
Overall, I thought this was an easy read. However, given the end-of-the-world topic of TILT and Annie’s journey, I expected there to be a more defined point to the story. The ending is open and I felt rather unsatisfied by it.
Rating: 3.5
Content warnings: death, blood, death of a parent (historical)
Reading format: Hardback
