Where in the OM Am I?

DiVello takes readers on her voyage of self-discovery as she explores the worlds of banking and yoga in her debut memoir.

Recent college graduate DiVello, reeling from a breakup, gets laid off from her first job. The same day, she tries her first yoga class, and is thrilled when she doesn’t think about her ex or her joblessness for its duration. Fast-forward several years, and DiVello has her personal life squared away—she’s engaged to a funny and understanding man named Nunnally—but she still uses yoga as a refuge from her new, spiritually numbing job in financial services public relations. Her boss, “Vomiting Vicky” (so named after a drunken incident at a meeting), and her offensive colleague, “The Meat,” drive her to look into a year-long training program to become a yoga instructor. As DiVello contemplates leaving her lucrative but spiritually trying professional career, she also plans her wedding. She later realizes that yogis can be just as vindictive and spiteful as financial services workers—just in more bizarre ways. DiVello’s fresh, sympathetic voice and humor often mask her underlying alienation. While she provides hilarious, evocative descriptions of her classmates—including a woman who wears a t-shirt emblazoned with the word “Vagina”—she considers herself a fraud for not giving up meat, caffeine or alcohol, even as she discovers that others are bigger poseurs. This memoir reads like the best of chick lit, but with far deeper self-reflection—and the notable difference that DiVello’s personal life is the one thing in her life that is in order.

A must-read for yogis (or would-be yogis) who enjoy a little snarkiness with their savasana