Book Review: Let's Pretend This Never Happened

Let's Pretend This Never Happened

By: Jenny Lawson

Published By: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam

Publication Date: April 2012

Page Count: 318

Buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or IndieBound

Source: Purchased by Reviewer

Audience: Adult - Memoir, Humor

This is, without doubt, the funniest book I have ever read. I laughed until I was shaking, tears running down my face, on at least 4 separate occasions... I read almost all of it with a grin though!  

This is the memoir (which is mostly true, kind of) of Jenny Lawson, a woman who has become known to many on the Internet as The Bloggess. I love reading her blog, and I really hoped that her book would live up to it's standard; it does and then some! She writes with a completely irreverent approach to daily life. In anyone else's hands her story of crippling anxiety and depression would have sunk like a stone, but she delivered her story with intelligence and biting humor - perfectly balancing the sobering aspects of her story with ridiculously funny tales from her time working in HR, and some of the most amusing arguments with her long-suffering husband Victor. 

At one time, I actually had to leave the staff break room because everyone had become utterly focused on me, quietly shaking with tears - literally weeping with how funny this was. What prompted me into such a state? The tale of when Lawson had a conversation with her OB-GYN about giving birth, the tearing that might happen and inquiring if she could maybe get sewn up with a Harry Potter scar shape to make the whole thing more fun and less traumatizing. Just one of the many moments I loved. 

This won't be for everyone but it 100% was for me. Her style is kind of ranty, rambling, and completely ridiculous... but I LOVED it. Anyone offended by swears really shouldn't pick this up. Regular readers of her blog will gobble this up, and I for one have bought copies for my friends. If you want a trial run to see if you'd like it, hop over to her blog and have a read... thebloggess.com. This has gone straight onto my 'awesome' shelf and I'll absolutely reread it one day when I need a laugh! 

Summary:

For fans of Tina Fey and David Sedaris-Internet star Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, makes her literary debut.

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 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.