Book Review : "Furiously Happy"

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well...this is a difficult book to review, because different things about it struck me in different ways. It is often very funny. Other times, Lawson seems to be trying way too hard to be funny and it comes off as manic and forced. Then again, her mental illness is central to the book and when she actually took time to talk about that, I found it engrossing, relatable, touching and brave.

The trouble is, she doesn't really slow down and talk about mental illness that often. When she does, her writing is wonderfully easy to read, heartfelt and honest. She spends an enormous amount of time doing a sort of free association football (to borrow a phrase) that isn't really that funny and made me feel like the entire book could have been cut by a third and lose nothing. Ultimately what I liked the most about the book was when she talks about how her first book made people--including herself--feel so much less alone, and how it actually saved lives. She talks about depression being a liar who wants to kill you (which it is) interspersed with the funny/unfunny stuff I mentioned. Recommended, but with reservations. I would say, feel free to skim where necessary, in order to get to the better chapters. That said, I really admire Jenny Lawson for writing about this, writing about it in such a non-textbooky way, and in simply finding the wherewithal to take on the challenge of writing a book and accomplishing that while dealing with a disease that talks against you all the while.

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