Jenny Lawson’s book is comedy first, memoir second; the trains of thought free wheeling and hilarious. She loves a good rant and likes to protest against her “editor’s” suggestions. She has false chapters and enjoys intentionally blending the line between fact and fiction. She has fun with her writing and she does so in laugh out loud fashion.
It tells of her life growing up in rural Texas and all of her animal encounters. Her father was a taxidermist and was always stopping his truck to pick up dead raccoons off the side of the road. They had many alive animals as well—waking up to her father bringing a bobcat into the bedroom wasn’t uncommon. There were dogs and cats and chickens and goats and foxes and squirrels and bats and snakes and many more. Her mother was a bookkeeper and was a stern and stable figure who reacted to all of her husband’s ridiculous antics as if they were totally normal.
Lawson marries a man named Victor when she’s 24 and has a daughter and a family of her own. They move to Houston, and she thinks she’s escaped from the craziness of rural Texas. However, after a few years pass by, a part of her begins to miss it. Her sister, who also had a wild childhood, seems to miss it as well. There aren’t as many animals in the city and they feel cut off from their parents and their upbringing. Eventually they move back and recreate their eccentric childhood for their own children, this time with Grandpa and Grandma in the mix,
Beneath the comedic surface Lawson struggles with mental illness and she’s open about it in her stories. She reflects on how her childhood depression led to eating disorders and bulimia and how her adult anxiety makes her word vomit horrible stories at parties. Thankfully, she has developed a sense of humor, however dark, as her coping mechanism and her shield. She channels it into her writing well (both in her books and on her blog).
She writes about connection and loneliness and family dynamics in a way that we can all relate toH and her stories are charming and off the wall and embrace their weirdness. The book is both an exploration and a reflection of how absurd life can be. It should be served with a coke.
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