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Summary
Summary
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Furiously Happy and Let 's Pretend This Never Happened comes a deeply relatable book filled with humor and honesty about depression and anxiety.
As Jenny Lawson's hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken , Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.
With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we're not alone and making us laugh while doing it. From the business ideas that she wants to pitch to Shark Tan k to the reason why Jenny can never go back to the post office, Broken leaves nothing to the imagination in the most satisfying way. And of course, Jenny's long-suffering husband Victor--the Ricky to Jenny's Lucille Ball--is present throughout.
A treat for Jenny Lawson's already existing fans, and destined to convert new ones, Broken is a beacon of hope and a wellspring of laughter when we all need it most.
Includes Photographs and Illustrations
Author Notes
Jenny Lawson is an award-winning humorist known for her great candor in sharing her struggle with mental illness. She lives in Texas with her husband and daughter and was constantly "buying too many books" ("Not a real thing," she insists), so she decided to skip the middleman and just started her own bookshop, which also serves booze because books and booze are what magic is made of. She has previously written Let's Pretend This Never Happened and Furiously Happy , both of which were #1 New York Times bestsellers. She also wrote You Are Here , which inexplicably made it onto the New York Times bestseller list in spite of the fact that it was basically a very fun coloring book. She would like to be your friend unless you're a real asshole. And yes, she realizes that this whole paragraph is precisely the reason she shouldn't be allowed to write her own bio.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Lawson (You Are Here) returns with a wry and entertaining take on her battle with depression, anxiety, and rheumatoid arthritis. As always, the author is unrivaled in her ability to use piercing humor and insight to take on heavy subjects. In the poignant "I Already Forgot I Wrote This," Lawson shares moving reflections on her family's history of dementia ("My mother jokes about it now and I do too, because you either laugh or you cry"). In "The Things We Do to Quiet the Monsters," she details the transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment she underwent to cure her medication-resistant mental health issues ("It feels like an invisible chisel drilling holes into your head while you have an ice-cream headache and also you're paying for it to happen to you"), and she excoriates her insurance provider in "An Open Letter to My Insurance Company": "you decided that it 'wasn't medically necessary' that I have the drug that had kept me away from suicide." In "Six Times I've Lost My Shoes While Wearing Them," she chronicles the strange places she's lost her left shoe after "walking out of it" due to fluctuating ankle swelling from chronic arthritis. The beauty of these essays lies in Lawson's unfailing hopefulness amid her trials. "After all," she notes, "we are changed by life... it puts its teeth in us... makes us who we are." Lawson's fans are in for a treat. (Apr.)
Kirkus Review
The Bloggess is back to survey the hazards and hilarity of imperfection. Lawson is a wanderer. Whether on her award-winning blog or in the pages of her bestselling books, she reliably takes readers to places they weren't even aware they wanted to go--e.g., shopping for dog condoms or witnessing what appears to be a satanic ritual. Longtime fans of the author's prose know that the destinations really aren't the point; it's the laugh-out-loud, tears-streaming-down-your-face journeys that make her writing so irresistible. This book is another solid collection of humorous musings on everyday life, or at least the life of a self-described "super introvert" who has a fantastic imagination and dozens of chosen spirit animals. While Furiously Happy centered on the idea of making good mental health days exceptionally good, her latest celebrates the notion that being broken is beautiful--or at least nothing to be ashamed of. "I have managed to fuck shit up in shockingly impressive ways and still be considered a fairly acceptable person," writes Lawson, who has made something of an art form out of awkward confessionals. For example, she chronicles a mix-up at the post office that left her with a "big ol' sack filled with a dozen small squishy penises [with] smiley faces painted on them." It's not all laughs, though, as the author addresses her ongoing battle with both physical and mental illness, including a trial of transcranial magnetic stimulation, a relatively new therapy for people who suffer from treatment-resistant depression. The author's colloquial narrative style may not suit the linear-narrative crowd, but this isn't for them. "What we really want," she writes, "is to know we're not alone in our terribleness….Human foibles are what make us us, and the art of mortification is what brings us all together." The material is fresh, but the scaffolding is the same. Fans will find comfort in Lawson's dependably winning mix of shameless irreverence, wicked humor, and vulnerability. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Whether she's writing about buying condoms she'll use to cover her dog's paws, applying to the Vampire Brotherhood, or hiding in her bathroom, best-selling humorist Lawson (Furiously Happy, 2015) openly describes a variety of ailments. She's losing her memory (and her shoes); she's anemic (she suspects blood-sucking bats in the night); she suffers from depression (and fears that it may lead to suicide); she has a host of autoimmune disorders. She sums it all up with, "I make others feel okay by being a barometer of awkwardness and self-doubt." She also makes others laugh. Her delivery is zany, clever, and raunchy. Her conversations with party guests, her long-suffering husband, her sister, and even herself are flat-out hilarious. And the situations she finds herself in are comic gold. Beneath the banter, however, is a heartbreaking chronicle of what goes on in the mind of a person dealing with anxiety and depression. Lawson is willing to try new drugs and procedures but ends up battling the insurance company at every turn. Lawson experiences some successes, and she's grateful as she glories in feeling normal even though her anxiety can return at any moment. Her insights are eye-opening as she gives readers a first-hand view of the struggles caused by mental illness.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Stock up for Lawson's millions of readers, who cherish her candor and have been eagerly awaiting her new book.
Library Journal Review
Lawson follows Furiously Happy, her best-selling book of humorous essays, with this hilarious and poignant look at her mental and physical challenges. The author discusses her anxiety, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, and other illnesses, so listeners might expect to hear a sobering story of challenges and defeat. But that's not Lawson's style. She has her low moments, to be sure, but she combats them with a wonderful sense of humor about life and herself. Lawson narrates the audiobook and sometimes laughs aloud at the absurdity of the situations in which she finds herself. The chapter in which readers of Lawson's blog share their most embarrassing moments will leave listeners in tears of laughter and rueful acknowledgment of their own faux pas. Throughout, Lawson is truthful about her difficult moments and maintains an admirable sense of hope for herself and her family. No one could have done a better job narrating. VERDICT This is a must-have for all public libraries.--B. Allison Gray, Goleta Valley Lib., CA
Table of Contents
| Jenny Lawson, Full-Grown Mammal: An Introduction | p. 1 |
| Already Forgot I Wrote This | p. 5 |
| Six Times I've Lost My Shoes While Wearing Them: A List that Shouldn't Exist | p. 13 |
| And Then I Bought Condoms for My Dog | p. 22 |
| Rainbow Fire | p. 27 |
| All of the Reasons Why I'm Not Coming to Your Party | p. 33 |
| Samuel L. Jackson Is Trying to Kill Me | p. 44 |
| How Do Dogs Know They Have Penises? | p. 59 |
| These Truisms Leave Out a Lot of the Truth | p. 66 |
| An Open Letter to My Health Insurance Company | p. 72 |
| Pm Not Going Outside Anymore. | p. 79 |
| The Things We Do to Quiet the Monsters | p. 85 |
| The Golden (Shower) Years | p. 111 |
| Awkwarding Brings Us Together | p. 116 |
| That Time I Got Haunted by Lizards with Bike Horns | p. 131 |
| We Are Who We Are Until We Aren't Anymore | p. 142 |
| Introverts Unite! (But Sweet Baby Jesus, Not in Real Life.) | p. 150 |
| My Dentist Hates Me | p. 156 |
| Am I Even Still Alive? | p. 161 |
| The Secret to a Long Marriage | p. 168 |
| So I'm Paying to Beat the Shit Out of Myself? | p. 175 |
| Anxiety Is a Lost Watch I Never Saw | p. 183 |
| The Eight Billionth Argument I Had with Victor This Week | p. 188 |
| Sometimes There Is Beauty in Breaking | p. 190 |
| No One Wants Tour Handwritten "Good for One Free Massage" Coupons, Darryl | p. 197 |
| I Feel It in My Bones | p. 204 |
| Editing Is Hell. Mostly for Editors. | p. 206 |
| The First Satanic Ritual I Ever Saw | p. 218 |
| Damaged Good(s) | p. 225 |
| My House Is a Garbage Fire Because I Clean It | p. 230 |
| And That's Why I Can Never Go Back to the Post Office Again | p. 233 |
| I Am a Magpie | p. 240 |
| Up Divorce Creek Without a Paddle (Because the Guide Didn't Trust Me Not to Push Victor Overboard with It) | p. 244 |
| Eclipse (Not the Twilight Book. The Other Kind.) | p. 249 |
| Business Ideas to Pitch on Shark Tank | p. 261 |
| Strange New Weather Patterns | p. 271 |
| Souls | p. 275 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 283 |
