A friend on Facebook recently asked what I was reading. I posted something to this effect:
"I'm reading "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" by Jenny Lawson. I felt like I'd been hit by a bus after reading the first chapter. Some parts of it make me laugh hysterically and others are just plain bizarre."
Here's a summary from the author's blog, The Bloggess:
When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father (a professional taxidermist who created dead-animal hand puppets) and a childhood of wearing winter shoes made out of used bread sacks. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it.
Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter are the perfect comedic foils to her absurdities, and help her to uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments-the ones we want to pretend never happened-are the very same moments that make us the people we are today.
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir is a poignantly disturbing, yet darkly hysterical tome for every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud. Like laughing at a funeral, this book is both irreverent and impossible to hold back once you get started.
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Let me start by saying that this book could probably be in the Guiness Book of World Records for the number of times the "f" word is used. Listen -- I'm no prude. I drop the "f" bomb with regularity, but it's not every other word out of my mouth. After the first few chapters, I started to feel like I was watching a comedian who was funny but insisted on using swear words constantly. The comedian STILL would've been funny even if the swear words were not used. I think Jenny could've cut back on the "f" bombs. Just sayin'.
Basically the book is 300 pages of stream of conciousness peak into the author's mind. Here's one part that I particularly liked/could relate to -- Jenny's on a blogger's retreat and and they're doing yoga.
"We were all doing the downward-dog position and all I could think was, 'For the love of Christ, just don't let me fart.' I'd begun to pray to the baby Jesus to deliver me from accidentally passing gas, and then someone else farted. It wasn't me, but all I could think was that I felt total empathy for her, and also that I really wanted to say, 'That was totally not me,' but it probably wouldn't be appropriate, since we were all supposed to be meditating." (p. 187)
Been there done that in Pilates (not the actual farting part...just the pleading with God that I don't fart.) Is this TMI? (This is what the whole book is like.)
Then there's the part where her husband says he'll strangle her if she brings home any more towels. So, instead she brings home an enormous metal chicken.
As mentioned in the synopsis, Jenny's Dad is a taxidermist. That brings a whole host of hilarity. Think "Green Acres" with a touch of craziness.
If you're looking for "serious" content, there is one chapter in which Jenny talks about the multiple miscarriages she had and how utterly devastating they were. Because she writes what her brain is saying/thinking, it's a pretty frank look at the pain suffered by those women that have miscarried.
It's hard to grade this. I literally laughed out loud multiple times, but then other times I just wanted to tell Jenny to turn her brain off...the rambling was too much.
Final grade: B
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