Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir)

Jenny Lawson
2012

Let's talk about charming. "If you need an arm condom, it might be time to reevaluate some of your life choices." Charming.

Yeah, I read thebloggess.com so clearly I'm going to love this novel. If you don't read the bloggess then you might be wondering why it's so clear that I'd love it. Well, because if I didn't love the bloggess I wouldn't read it anymore and probably wouldn't talk about it. So I wouldn't go out an buy her book the same day it came out in softcover (we're all not ritzy enough to own hardcovers) and I wouldn't read it and subsequently review it. The book is just like the blog, but better.

Lawson talks about everything from swimming with a family of dead squirrels to trying to have a baby and then some. I can't really find a catch-phrasey way of describing this book. You should probably just read it yourself.

I love her language. She writes the way I speak but can't dare to write because my Mom might be reading. The F-Bomb isn't even a bomb, because if it was this book would be a war zone. At points it feels like she's going out of her way to be offensive, and I just find that charming. What does that say about me?

Still, with all of her fowl language and off colour subject matter, she manages to be extremely human, humble, and forgiving. She talks about miscarriage with so much respect, it's hard to believe that a person who claims to have so much social anxiety manages to be so personable and open about such difficult matters. Throughout her life's narrative (this is after all a memoir) she has encountered so many alarming issues and pitfalls and has managed to come out of it all as a mostly sane adult with a wicked sense of humour.

So four lightning bolts for Ms. Lawson. Thanks for being open and wonderful, and for giving me weird hope for my future. However, I can see how this book might not be for everyone, and so can the author, in her introduction she writes, "I apologize. . . for offending you, because you're going to get halfway through this book and giggle at non sequiturs about Hitler and abortions and poverty, and you'll feel superior to all the uptight, easily offended people who need to learn how to take a fucking joke, but then somewhere in here you'll read one random thing that you're sensitive about, and everyone else will thing it's hysterical, but you'll think, 'Oh, that is way over the line.' I apologize for that one thing. Honestly I don't know what I was thinking."

And that is why she's awesome.

Reviewed by Meg!