Inside the Mind of Tom McAllister: Unraveling 42 Years of Life’s Most Impossible Moments
What if your life could be distilled into 42 snapshots — one essay per year — capturing the mess of growing up, the grit of middle age, and the subtle ache of getting older? That’s exactly what Tom McAllister attempts in It All Felt Impossible: 42 Years in 42 Essays. Now, I’ve read plenty of collections that feel like ticking off a checklist, but McAllister dodges that trap artfully. Instead, he invites you into moments both mundane and seismic, connecting the dots between personal history and cultural upheaval with a rare honesty that’s almost disarming. Ever found yourself wanting to make “something” out of the everyday just to have a story worth telling? Yeah, he wrestles with that same impulse — and he’s not shy about his own blind spots, which makes the whole journey feel breathtakingly real. Whether you’re nodding along to teenage regrets or wincing through the trials of aging bodies and bad habits, McAllister’s essays whisper a hard truth: imperfection is the only constant, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Curious to see how one writer turns the chaos of time and self-doubt into something sharp, thoughtful, and even kinda funny? Dive in and find out.
Reviewed by Emily Webber
In Tom McAllister’s collection, It All Felt Impossible: 42 Years in 42 Essays, he challenges himself to write an essay for every year of his life. There’s a danger this could come across as forced and feel like a response to a writing exercise. Yet, McAllister pulls off something wonderful, connecting ordinary life moments to the larger political and cultural perspectives of the time he’s writing about. Each essay is its own micro-memoir, but reading the entire collection becomes a meditation on childhood experiences, aging, and how a person changes (or doesn’t) over time.
