A review by maramergens
Shrill by Lindy West

4.25

By the first chapter or so, I wasn’t sure if this book was going to resonate much with me at this point in my life. It felt like it was written in a tone that was stuck in 2016 internet humor, what folks in the 2020s might now call “cringe.” But her chapter on her abortion really brought me back in and reminded me why so much of what was being discussed in 2016 was and still is so important. Then the whole second half of the book was amazing. The last six essays or so tell a somewhat continuous story about her relationship with comedy, trolls on the internet, and the death of her father. And wow. This book is a stark reminder of how difficult it is, how much bravery it takes, simply to be a fat woman who’s not hiding. The amount of abuse she (and many others) has had to endure just for existing is unforgivable. I cried during the This American Life chapter. Humans can be incredibly cruel, and I could spend a lifetime reading hateful comments on the internet and trying to understand where that cruelty comes from. There’s so much abuse that I’ll never understand, but being able to hear one singular person own up to their mistakes and attempt to explain why they did it, makes it a little bit easier to exist in this world.