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Broken (in the best possible way)
2021
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Library Journal Review
Lawson follows Furiously Happy, her best-selling book of humorous essays, with this hilarious and poignant look at her mental and physical challenges. The author discusses her anxiety, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, and other illnesses, so listeners might expect to hear a sobering story of challenges and defeat. But that's not Lawson's style. She has her low moments, to be sure, but she combats them with a wonderful sense of humor about life and herself. Lawson narrates the audiobook and sometimes laughs aloud at the absurdity of the situations in which she finds herself. The chapter in which readers of Lawson's blog share their most embarrassing moments will leave listeners in tears of laughter and rueful acknowledgment of their own faux pas. Throughout, Lawson is truthful about her difficult moments and maintains an admirable sense of hope for herself and her family. No one could have done a better job narrating. VERDICT This is a must-have for all public libraries.--B. Allison Gray, Goleta Valley Lib., CA
Publishers Weekly Review
Lawson (You Are Here) returns with a wry and entertaining take on her battle with depression, anxiety, and rheumatoid arthritis. As always, the author is unrivaled in her ability to use piercing humor and insight to take on heavy subjects. In the poignant "I Already Forgot I Wrote This," Lawson shares moving reflections on her family's history of dementia ("My mother jokes about it now and I do too, because you either laugh or you cry"). In "The Things We Do to Quiet the Monsters," she details the transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment she underwent to cure her medication-resistant mental health issues ("It feels like an invisible chisel drilling holes into your head while you have an ice-cream headache and also you're paying for it to happen to you"), and she excoriates her insurance provider in "An Open Letter to My Insurance Company": "you decided that it 'wasn't medically necessary' that I have the drug that had kept me away from suicide." In "Six Times I've Lost My Shoes While Wearing Them," she chronicles the strange places she's lost her left shoe after "walking out of it" due to fluctuating ankle swelling from chronic arthritis. The beauty of these essays lies in Lawson's unfailing hopefulness amid her trials. "After all," she notes, "we are changed by life... it puts its teeth in us... makes us who we are." Lawson's fans are in for a treat. (Apr.)
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