The Sunny Nihilist

Details

Author: Wendy Syfret
Published: 2021
Pages: 192

Started: March 13, 2025
Finished: March 20, 2025

Short Review

Stare into the void and you might just be able to relax a little. Wendy Syfret proposes a sunnier version of nihilism—one that forces you to live in the present moment and elicits more gratitude than it does grimness, more glow than gloom.

In many ways, I agree with Syfret. She talks at length about how accepting the meaninglessness of things—although, lack of importance might be the better phrase—can help ease the stress of life and work. Nihilism, according to Syfret, focuses our attention on the here and now and pushes us to work towards bettering the world around us through acts of kindness and, in a certain sense, activism. (Incidentally, Syfret has also authored a book called How to Think Like an Activist.)

In the end, her conclusion undercuts her premise. Could it be that what Syfret has done here is argued that, actually, life does have a meaning, and that it is to do good? It's very Vonnegut, in a way.

My biggest beef with the book is that it is far too long, despite clocking in at only 192 pages. Each chapter felt to me like a rewrite of the same blog post that had been revised to emphasize a slightly different thought than the last. Then again, the book was written during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in Australia. I'll cut her some slack.

If you like the rambling musings of extremely online millennials, this might be for you. If not, you might want to skip it.