After reading “Benedict Cumberbatch is like Alan Rickman Benjamin Buttoning” by the inimitable Malin, I immediately ordered that book as well as this, Jenny Lawson’s first. I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me. I didn’t know anything about Ms. Lawson or her blog and twitter presence but that just didn’t matter, her voice is so unique and fresh. Besides, how can you not love a book with chapter titles such as “No One Ever Taught Me Couch Etiquette”, “Thanks For the Zombies, Jesus” and “It Wasn’t Even My Crack”?
Ms. Lawson writes irreverently and hilariously about growing up in West Texas in a rather, uh, unorthodox family. Her father was an avid hunter and taxidermist, so animals in various states of animation become the norm and not just outside in his shop, either. There might be a bathtub full of raccoons, but just to clarify, “we don’t sleep with goats”.
After getting married, she and her husband Victor move to Houston, set on creating a life for themselves and any children they may have that is far removed from their rural upbringing. Naturally as the years go by, they find themselves wanting to return to some version of that kind of childhood for their daughter Hailey. Wide open spaces to play and explore in, vistas that are more than the endless normity of the subdivision.
Whether recounting hilarious misunderstandings between husband and wife, wacky tales about her father or more sobering accounts of medical challenges, she writes with such heart and candor that I couldn’t help pressing this book on no less than three other people. And that was just Tuesday.
