I’ll mention my favorite parts, but I am not giving up any more humorous quotes, because that’s a crappy thing to do to a humor writer.

And then she adds, not entirely jokingly, that part of the reason she is still married is that there are things in her marriage that she doesn’t write about.īut even more compelling is her level of perception, and her ability to understand the subtext of just about everything. There are good periods, and there are bad periods. One is her disarming frankness for example, she mentions that people, remarking on her twentieth wedding anniversary, ask about her secrets for a long and happy marriage, and she tells us that actually, not all of those years have been happy. But there are other components much easier to spot. What is it about depression and humor, and the connection between them? It’s hard to tease apart all of the components that make Lawson’s writing so compelling to a certain extent, it’s alchemy of the human spirit, I suppose, combined with skill at self-expression. Almost exactly, I mean I was moaning, but I hadn’t reached for anything sharp. Can she write a coherent sentence, and then end it when it’s over? Of course, I continued reading and loved the essays in the middle, and as we draw near the end, she refers to the challenges she encounters in writing, citing her inclination to overwrite, and the resultant paragraphs that contain “a run-on sentence that would make an English teacher cut herself,” and I howled, because that’s it, exactly. I’m throwing my hands up, wondering just why a professional writer would blather on like this.

She starts slow and then builds toward most of her best material, leaving me smiling as the book concludes.īut let’s go back to the material at the start, which I find to be random in a way that yearns for the hand of a high profile editor.

In contrast, the earliest part of this memoir is good, but it’s not great. The trend is to make the first three chapters-most likely what sells the book-sterling, and then fill the rest with mediocre, highly missable prose. Lawson bucks a somewhat disquieting trend, and I am so glad. My thanks go to Net Galley and Henry Holt for the review copy. Jenny Lawson, AKA The Bloggess, has a new book out, and I do believe it’s my favorite.

Jenny lawson broken review