written by Roz Chast

If you can make it past the introduction without laughing out loud, you’re a stronger person than I am. Roz Chast has taken an alphabetical list of her greatest fears (you can take almost any word and add “-phobia” to it, she points out) and catalogued them for our own edification. You will find the familiar here (carnivals, of course—in what world are carnivals not frightening?) and some less obvious (balloons—because they are all waiting to explode, “and where’s the fun in that?”). Chast’s fear of elevators (“the perfect storm of claustrophobia, acrophobia, and agoraphobia”) is drawn out with particular wit.

Chast has been a cartoonist for The New Yorker for some three decades now, and she brings all that humor and charm to bear in What I Hate from A to Z, a book that she explains was born out an alphabet game she plays while trying to coax herself into sleep. Each two-page spread in the book covers one topic, the left-hand page offering a brief description of the artist’s fear and the right-hand page bringing it to life.
 
What I Hate from A to Z is charmingly hilarious and unexpectedly thought-provoking. Although you’ll wish it hadn’t provoked those thoughts. When she reaches the letter Z, the end, you know exactly where her mind is going to go. You’re right there with her, for better or for worse. But it’s well worth it. Your mind may be troubled from it all, but your belly will be pleasantly sore from all the laughs along the way.

-- John Hogan

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