kplab81 's review for:

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book about Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson

3.0

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I'm not going to lie - this book had me at its cover. It's hard to ignore the intense glee radiating out of the crazed eyes of the taxidermy raccoon on the front of Lawson's book. Even more wonderful is the amount of time she spends explaining her relationship with said raccoon and her uncommon love for the art of taxidermy (her dad was a pro). The stuffed raccoon is just one example of the zany humor that Lawson brings to the second part of her memoir (part one was 2012's Let's Pretend This Never Happened, which I have yet to read). In Furiously Happy, Lawson tackles her life-long experience with mental and physical illness. She talks candidly about her fear of failure as a mother, wife, daughter, and friend; her intense anxiety and phobias that often leave her social and professional life in shambles; and the unconditional understanding and support she has found amongst her fans and fellow "patients." I love the delicate balance that Lawson successfully strikes between laugh-out-loud humor and quiet, profound insight when talking about an often ignored and intensely stigmatized subject in our culture. While her humor feels uneven at times, I really admire her unflinching description of living with mental illness in modern America - it's equal parts funny, ugly, moving, sad, and enraging. Lawson's writing is far from perfect, but it gives voice to a subject we need to be talking more about in our society and it does it with gusto.