Nothing: Something to Believe in

What is it like to grow up in a house with no religion? What kind of experiences does someone have when one is not a believer and yet comes into constant contact with religion? How can a person find out what they are when they focus primarily on what they are not? These are the questions raised in the memoir Nothing . With humour, wit, and poignant insight, Nica Lalli recounts her mishaps and misadventures with religion from early childhood into her adult years. As a questioning child, unsure of her idea of God, then a teenager feeling like an outsider, and finally an adult mother confronted by her husband’s born-again Christian family and questions from her own children, Nica vividly describes her struggle to find out what kind of something she really is. In the end, the author finds that nothing is a philosophy to be embraced rather than feared. Nothing is an appealing, sensitively written story that offers hope, humour, and reason to millions of similar Americans who feel alienated in an ever more religiously polarised nation.