Let's Pretend This Never Happened

I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride that never stopped while reading this book. It was thrilling and scary and fun. I also couldn’t stop bursting into laughter that ranged from high-pitched shrieking to low-key chuckling, all while nervously looking around to see if anyone in my proximity would ask what was so funny. Because … I don’t know what was so funny.

Everything I was laughing at was inappropriate. Concerning. Completely not funny if I thought about it. But that is the genius of Jenny Lawson’s memoir. Her wild and disturbing journey through life and her… show more.

I first discovered this writer through her blog, The Bloggess. I admired her frank, weird, obscene imagination then – and I still do, now that she’s become a best-selling author. 

Her childhood in rural Texas could not be more different than mine in the urban Bronx, but she still feels like a kindred spirit. I love the way she navigates through childhood, marriage, pregnancy, and work while not allowing her physical and psychological issues to limit her in any way. 

One of those issues is being phobic, and that’s something I can relate to. You name it, I’m afraid of… show more.

Any memoir which begins with the author calling Laura Ingalls a liar because she didn’t employ fact checkers while writing Little House on the Prairie, is my kinda read. Jenny Lawson writes in a non-sequitur, stream of consciousness way that I love because that’s how my mind works. This book is laugh-out-loud funny and edgy, but also heartfelt and heartbreaking. It’s a wonderful glimpse into the mind of someone who is unabashedly messy. We need more stories like this.