Book Review: Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosch

This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative--like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it--but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:

Pictures
Words
Stories about things that happened to me
Stories about things that happened to other people because of me
Eight billion dollars*
Stories about dogs
The secret to eternal happiness*

*These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

My Review:
My main reason for deciding to read the book, other than the great reviews, was the cover. I had seen Allie's artwork appearing on memes all across the internet-that Read All The Books thing-and I had just finished a book by Jenny Lawson and was in the mood for something similar. I picked this up and I'm glad I did.

Allie gives her account of living with her mental health issues but shares them in a funny and endearing way, along with brilliant cartoon illustrations. She begins with a section on sending letters to her younger selves, which was amusing. I can imagine some of the things I'd tell my younger selves if it was at all possible though I think that my adult selves could do with the same warnings about life choices! It's a whole new way to look at the issue 'if I knew then what I know now'... It was a bit scary to read about the things Allie's younger selves did. Mistaking face cream for frosting is a mistake we could all make at the age of two, but the running around naked at school when seven could have been an issue for her school!

Dead imaginary friends for a five year old could have been a bit of a worry for her parents. I think her mother might have been concerned at her ten year old wanting to be timed doing agility courses pretending to be a dog and woofing at everyone. It feels so wrong to be laughing at some of these things but the whole point of these books is to put a more human face on mental health issues, and I think telling all these stories is pretty brave. How easy is it to tell strangers about embarrassing things in your life or moments when you lost control in a big way? I admire people who do this.

It was impossible not to laugh at the funny floor banana mother****** story but one of my favourite bits was the wonderfully illustrated God of Cake. I loved that but it does have a serious point about how hard it can be to deal with that kind of obsessive compulsion. I mean, I love cake but I don't go to those lengths to get it. Equally the story about finding herself unable to return a dvd to a rental store for 35 straight days is a pretty horrific example of what Allie was going through. I also liked the story about the invading goose. I'm not sure I'd have wanted to deal with that!

I could relate to a lot of the points that Allie talked about when it came to dealing with depression. I'm sure anyone who has suffered it remembers the endless crying, the dark void in your chest that makes you feel empty, not having the concentration to do anything...I think Allie described and drew it perfectly. I understood the moods, every little thing seeming to go wrong in a day, and the inability to deal with the slightest thing going wrong. I mean I get unhinged when someone blocks our driveway! It can totally screw up my entire day when I brood on things like that.

If you liked Jenny Lawson's books and  have an interest in people writing humour about mental health issue, then you might enjoy this book. 

Read February 2020
4 star.