She brings the same wit to this subject as she does to her stories about her dogs-even if it makes the reader more likely to tear up than crack up. There is a lot of self-revelation here but no self-pity. I was less excited about the discovery because it turned my dog into a horrible, vomit-making perpetual-motion machine.”īut her best stuff is the deep stuff, especially the chapters about her battles with severe depression. Here’s a typical snippet: “To the simple dog, throwing up was like some magical power that she never knew she possessed-the ability to create infinite food. Some of Brosh’s stories are funny without being particularly meaningful, such as her tales about her two dogs and their humorously illogical inner thoughts. I’m amazed at how expressive and effective her intentionally crude drawings are. Her timing and tone are consistently spot on. I don’t mean to suggest that giving an outlet to our often-despicable me is a novel form of humor, but she is really good at it. Despite her book’s title, Brosh’s stories feel incredibly-and sometimes brutally-real. It’s based on her wildly popular website.īrosh has quietly earned a big following even though, as her official bio puts it, she “lives as a recluse in her bedroom in Bend, Oregon.” The adventures she recounts are mostly inside her head, where we hear and see the kind of inner thoughts most of us are too timid to let out in public. The book consists of brief vignettes and comic (in both senses of the word) drawings about Brosh’s young life (she’s in her late 20s). I must have interrupted Melinda a dozen times to read to her passages that made me laugh out loud. But you’ll wish it went on longer, because it’s funny and smart as hell. You will rip through it in three hours, tops. They’re long nonfiction books that might look a little out of place beside the pool or on the beach.īut Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things that Happened, by Allie Brosh, is an honest-to-goodness summer read. Some of the books I’ve recommended as summer reads really aren’t.

Hyperbole and a half comics