by Joseph Fink
First published 2021
Joseph Fink and his wife Meg Bashwiner each tell their version of the same decade together. In 2009, both 22 years old, they meet while selling tickets at an East Village theater company. Joseph has just moved to New York from the West Coast and works odd jobs to pay rent. Meg lives with her parents in New Jersey and commutes to her theater internship. They become friends in the cramped box office, then a couple within a year. Over the next decade, they experience their first kiss, breakup, reunion, marriage, and international fame as Joseph cocreates Welcome to Night Vale. Each partner narrates their memories without consulting the other. Sometimes they disagree on basic facts like who paid for the morning after pill on their first date. Sometimes they remember identical details but interpret them differently. They share stories of a father's death, world tours, mental illness, and conversations about children. This joint memoir captures two people growing up together while learning to be a couple.
Genres: family-life, autobiography, contemporary, memoir, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: East Village, New Jersey, New York
Period: 2009
193 pages · Kindle Edition · Harper Perennial
Content warnings: mental-illness