Review: Let's Pretend This Never Happened

You know that part where you're waiting for someone and you bring a book to read while you're waiting and and get to the part in the book that says, "Then Victor realized that I must be using his hands-free headset, and he got all kinds of pissed off that I was 'getting it sweaty.' And that's when I hung up on him.  Because getting a headset sweaty was kind of small potatoes compared to the fact that I was brandishing a machete at large raptors, while considering the pros and cons of hiring a pimp to dig up our dead dog," and the person shows up and wants to know while you're laughing uncontrollably and it takes you ten minutes to explain?  Yeah, that happens a lot reading Let's Pretend This Never Happened.

Even though Jenny Lawson gets into all sorts of situations that take ten minutes to explain and that make you laugh uncontrollably, at the same time I kept thinking how poignant this book is, and at times almost unbearably sad.  If there's one critique I have it's that I sometimes feel that The Bloggess is protecting us from the sadness.  I felt this in particular in the chapter in which she describes her rheumatoid arthritis where I wish she hadn't framed a truly awful time in an admittedly hilarious story involving being stabbed by a chicken.

But believe me, that is a minor quibble for a beautiful, heartbreaking, profane, and breathtakingly funny book.  I still want to know who she wants to play her family and herself in the movie.  I can tell you already, the book is better.