The most annoying literary trend of the decade is the memoir that
recounts one year in the author’s life. Most of the “My Year
of…” memoirs involve some sort of fraternity-style
challenge—living according to the Old Testament, not buying
anything, dating any man who asks. Noelle Oxenhandler has produced a
breathtaking new low in the subgenre with The Wishing Year: A House,
a Man, My Soul—A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire. It’s exactly
that simple: She wishes for a year and calls it a book.
But there are no bad book ideas; there are only bad writers.
Unfortunately, Oxenhandler is a bad writer. More accurately,
she’s a bad observer, both of herself and of others. Early in the book,
she claims to hate wishing for material gain. Not long afterward, she
sees a Jaguar and throws the I Ching to determine whether she
should buy it. The I Ching says not to buy the sports
car, and she mourns the loss: “That night, the Jaguar prowls in my
dreams in his bright darkness, giving off a greenish night sheen.”
Oxenhandler is a covert coveter.
And she molests just about every major religion in this book
with misunderstanding, trivialization, or sheer idiocy. When it comes
to faith, she’s like a bratty toddler in a china shop.
She doesn’t stop with religion, either: Oxenhandler really
embarrasses herself when thinking about race. During her year, along
with a house and “spiritual healing,” Oxenhandler wishes for a man. The
house practically drops into her lap, and she begins dating a man named
Nicholas. Unfortunately, Nicholas, who Oxenhandler portrays as a
kind of retarded middle-aged man-child, is racked with guilt: It
seems his great-great-great-great-grandfather owned slaves and treated
them cruelly. In a form of yuppie penitence, Nicholas works an
unfulfilling, low-paying job and writes apologetic letters to the
slaves’ descendants.
One day, as Oxenhandler is making pancakes for her poor, beleaguered
man, she imagines that Aunt Jemima appears before her and says,
“He has to stop punishing himself.” Oxenhandler is exceedingly relieved
that the African-American syrup advertisement has absolved Nicholas of
generations of slave-owning guilt, and she goes about the happy work of
intervening in his life. Aunt Jemima reappears at several points to
bless her journey.
Along the way, there are dry stretches where Oxenhandler explains
the history of wishes and wishing, and there are maddening bits, like
where she admits to cheating on her ex-husband with her Zen teacher
or buys a pair of fluorescent purple Crocs to celebrate a trip
to Hawaii.
You know what I wish for, Noelle Oxenhandler? I wish I could
unread your book. 
Noelle Oxenhandler reads Thurs July 17, Elliott Bay Book Company,
7:30 pm, free.