“I am the Wizard of Oz of housewives in that I am both ‘Great and Terrible’ and because I sometimes hide behind the curtains.”
Jenny Lawson, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir.
I first discovered Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, about eight years ago through her online persona and was hooked. At the time, I was living away from home and was a new, first-time mom and definitely needed a laugh!
I found her writings relatable, hilarious and just distasteful enough to tickle my dark, dry sense of humour with discussions of zombie kits under her bed and her father’s attempts to entertain her and her friends with a gruesome hand puppet made from a dead squirrel.
This book may be an acquired taste for some, and is not for the faint of heart: there is an especially high dead-animal count, constant cursing and occasional disjointed manner. For her many fans (me included) this haphazardness only adds to the book’s charm.
She has grown from a hugely popular online blogger to a bestselling author basically by journaling about her life and embellishing it along the way when things got boring.
In the introduction of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson writes, “This book is totally true, except for the parts that aren’t.” She added that disclaimer to sidestep any threat of being sued – and perhaps to give her family an out if needed at social gatherings.
Lawson relishes in revealing many details about her life and proves that a memoir need not be exact to be enjoyable. She leads her readers through the mouse hole that is her life. (The mouse, of course, for those in the know – would be “taxidermied” and wearing some sort of period costume.)
Lawson leads the reader down the winding path that has been her life, covering her childhood, teenage years and later on married life and motherhood.
The tale rambles but is never dull. She enters high school in Texas; the only Goth girl in a sea of cowboys and, over time, comes to terms with her differences and eccentricity and finds herself in the world of blogging where quirkiness is essential.
Her sense of humour allows her to tread lightly on some of the more painful parts of her life – those recollections that the title suggests might be better left repressed.
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is a poignantly disturbing yet darkly uproarious work for every brainy misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud. Like laughing at a funeral, this book is both cheeky and impossible to hold back once you get started.
If you have someone on your gift list with a dark sense of humour—and is not put off by some vulgarity – this book is perfect. In fact, I’m hoping to receive her newly published book, Furiously Happy for Christmas just so I can laugh more with this irreverent lady. Let’s Pretend This Never Happened scores 3.7/5.
