Exit

Thoughtfully and beautifully written. A quick read, I really enjoyed this book. The author covers a wide variety of subjects, but it all comes together well. The vignettes at the end of the book were particularly good.

This is a book that knows it will be dated the minute it went to the publishers. It says exactly what date that was, tying into the awful deaths of Vietnamese immigrants in the UK in the back of a truck in Essex. And it does so with a wild abandon and glee, not realising that between submission and publication a massive EXIT will be crowbarred into public life, history will have happened. That's fine, Laura Waddell is writing for that moment, her survey - yet again massively broad as the wont in with Object Lessons - takes the concept of Exit on a broad journey from the obvious (the sign on the cover), via the cultural (lots of Sesame Street) and of course the metaphysical.

Of all the Object Lesson books I have read this is the most disjointed, the most prone to leap from idea to idea, to stress certain political conceptions of exit/entrance to a forensic level whilst leave other (where is the NO EXIT sign) to the wind. It is also probably the most enjoyable, Waddell is thinking out loud here and whilst she hits a couple of the core concepts (the history of the Fire Exit, New York Shirt Waist Fire), there are lots on non-obvious tangents The piece on Kowloon Walled City could easily be argued out of the book, but sits well in a set of thoughts about buildings which are malleable, exits become corridors, become entrances. Because once you get to the metaphysical level (and before you think about death) an exit is just a transition in state, and exodus a transition of state. She seems to be having the most fun of the Object Lesson authors I have read so far (it is most similar to Political Sign, which may not be surprising as they both tangentially concern themselves with signage).

Waddell leaves he coup de grace to her final chapter however, giving us thirty examples of exits, some frivolous, some aw inspiriting, some tragically sad. It was as if the previous idea fountain was the prologue to thirty short stories about exits, and I loved it.

[Netgallley ARC]

I've loved Laura Waddell's writing for a while so I was excited to see this available on NetGalley and it did not disappoint. Meditating on the exit sign as an innocuous yet vital object leads to engaging essays about class, climate change and privilege, and I'd highly recommend it for a quick yet valuable read.