Book Review: Jenny Lawson – “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened”

Jenny Lawson realized that the most mortifying moments of our lives—the ones we’d like to pretend never happened—are in fact the ones that define us.
In the #1 New York Times bestseller, “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened”, Lawson takes readers on a hilarious journey recalling her bizarre upbringing in rural Texas, her devastatingly awkward high school years, and her relationship with her long-suffering husband, Victor. Chapters include: “Stanley the Magical, Talking Squirrel”; “A Series of Angry Post-It Notes to My Husband”; “My Vagina Is Fine. Thanks for Asking”; “And Then I Snuck a Dead Cuban Alligator on an Airplane.” Pictures with captions (no one would believe these things without proof) accompany the text. (Source: goodreads.com)

How do you explain this book to anybody who has neither heard of it nor read it themselves? Answer: you can’t, which will make this blog post a lot of fun. Two things that are for sure about it, though: 1. I have never read a better and more entertaining book than this one, having me more than once in stitches including stupid grinning on the bus home and, as a result of that, weird looks from my felllow bus companions. And 2., never in my life have I used so many bookmarks in a book before (thank God I have it as a Kindle version, I guess. Would be funny to look at if on my bookshelf otherwise). There’s not one page in this book that will not make your fingers wanting to switch over to the “Put to bookmarks” button, I guarantee you.

For starters, Jenny Lawson didn’t have the best and wealthiest childhood in the world, if you think about money. With what she grew up were experiences. Weird experiences. Loads of them. For example, one day, her father, who was a taxidermist and always brought dead (or almost dead, that is) animals home for Jenny and her sister to play with. One of those lovely things was a little racoon called Rambo who attacked Jenny’s sister when they were little and Jenny described it as “…and it was totally awesome.” Or the part where she says that if the reader can’t take a book as disturbing as hers (with talking about standing in a dead animal in her father’s taxidermy shop), they should “get another book that’s less disturbing than this one. Like one about kittens. Or genocide.” Sadly, I am not making this up, this is exactly how it’s described in the book.

I know that mostly all of the experiences Jenny makes in this book, throughout her life, with a gang of turkeys (or, according to her father, “big quails”) following her around school, wild animals like racoons, cougars or goats showing up right next to your head all of a sudden, being an outcast at school, having more than one miscarriage, experiencing drugs, are not the stuff you should usually laugh about (except for the first two things, maybe). But the thing I personally love about this book is that there is no sugarcoating whatsoever in it. Jenny Lawson describes it as it has happened, as she has experienced and suffered through it, and she does it in the most entertaining way the reader could ever imagine. Her life hasn’t been kind to her all the time, but she got through it, she straightened her back, directed her gaze into the future and never looked back in pity. In fact, she embraced every single episode in her life, no matter how weird and unbelievable it has been. This is an ability I admire more than anything else, because it makes the story itself so vivid, and transfers the book into a complete pageturner, and, also, grabs you by the hand and doesn’t let you go until you’ve finished.

I have read critics about this book where people said they found Jenny Lawson “annoying”, “unbelievable” and “unsympathetic”. I, however, do not understand such an opinion. For me, even during the introduction of the book, she became one of the most sympathetic writers that are out in the world. Maybe it’s the fact that she is exactly like one of my friends, Laura, is, who’s got her own blog on here (mysticmonkey.wordpress.com), and who is the most entertaining writer/person for me. While I was reading, it was like I was reading a book of a friend like Laura. I instantly bonded with Jenny when I read about how her parents once kicked her out a driving car (which was totally an accident, don’t be shocked, you’ll understand it if you read it) in the introduction, and the way she writes and tells her life story…I can’t explain it, it just got to me, and was the foundation for me admiring this author to no end.

The ability to grab a reader by the hand, pulling them in and making them feel like a part of the book, like they can’t put the book down for even a second because they’d feel like a part of them is being put down – that is an ability that is the one that I, myself, strive for one day. Jenny Lawson’s writing talent is absolutely out of this world, she describes simple, normal, yet sometimes horrible facts of life in such a hilarious way that the reader can’t help but enjoy every single word of it. And me, personally, she got to the point where even just a few sentences into the introduction, I wished I wouldn’t have started the book because I knew I would have finished it just far too soon, and that I could read this book for the 1st time again.

There is no way I can give her only 5 out of 5 stars in my rating, so I’ll just say: go, buy this book. It’s worth every penny, and it will make your life brighter and is a true enrichment to every bookshelf.

Simply the BEST. BOOK. EVER. Thank you, Jenny Lawson. Well done. Very well done.