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Book Review of Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
Minehava avatar reviewed on + 829 more book reviews


I wanted to like this book. I liked the idea of approaching the distress of mental illness from a lense of absurdity, but instead of being humorous it is written as though the author is in the grips of a manic episode. It feels that she is selling the idea that the opposite extreme from depression (mania) is somehow positive, adaptive, and healthy. This is not funny and irreverent, as I expected, but rather illustrative of an inherently unhealthy, frenetic, potentially delusional state.

I won't comment on her opinion and approach to mental illness. I know it can be offensive and it's very personal to some people. I'll just say I was actually looking for a good read about self acceptance and instead I got the painfully annoying 6-paragraph intro to a recipe on a mommy blog. She wore me out. My analogy of this book: Imagine sitting in the window seat of a plane flying non-stop from the East Coast to Hawaii (a 12 hr flight), and the passenger next to you never shuts up- never! Every single life story-every single whiz of a thought- even the narrative dialogues in his/her brain are spoken about.