Reviewed by Meygan
Before I begin my review, I feel that I must explain
something. My husband is no longer a night owl, but I am. Therefore, when he is
in bed trying to get enough slumber for his 6am awakening, I am in bed cozied
up with two cats of my three cats and a good book. Anyways, the lightest sound
irritates my husband whenever he is sleeping, and this includes if the two cats
decide to fight on top of us in the middle of the night. Well, the particular
night that I decided that I would read Hyperbole
and a Half, my husband was already annoyed by the fact my youngest cat
would not stop meowing. When she finally fell asleep, I began reading. I could
not contain my laughter. I laughed so loud but was trying to be quite at the
same time, so that resulted in the bed shaking like a vibrating bed from the
1970s. Not only did this wake up my husband, but my cats woke up again and
started going crazy—meowing and running and scratching everything they could
get their little claws on. Needless to say, I read this book last night
upstairs on my couch away from Mr. Early Bird.
Now, I felt like I had to say that just so people
will get the idea of how hilarious and absurd I found this book. Allie Brosh
tries to describe her own book but she can’t, so she just makes a list of
things that are in the book such as pictures, words, stories about dogs, etc.
Allie Brosh is a very entertaining author, plus the use of memes and comic book
like illustrations set it apart from other books. She tells many stories about
her dogs, which she refers to as Simple dog and the Helper dog. She also
includes a story from her childhood where she devoured an entire birthday cake
that was made for her grandfather, even though her mother had repeatedly told
her to stay away from the cake. One of my favorite stories is when Allie goes
outside because she hears a horrifying noise only to discover that there is a
goose in her yard. Suddenly realizing that she had a displeasing incident with
a goose when she was a child, she slowly tries to make her way out of the
goose’s way. While she manages to escape the ghastly goose, she forgets that
she has left the back door open, in which the goose proceeds to enter the house
and attack her boyfriend. Allie and Duncan spend quite some time trying to
capture the goose, all while debating if they could just leave the goose in
their house and avoid that room for the rest of their lives.
Although all of her topics aren’t serious, Allie
approaches them with hilarity. She spends a section of the book talking about
when she was depressed and how no matter what she tried to do, she couldn’t
stop being depressed. No one in her life seemed to understand that. “But trying
to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies
depression if like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their
hands grow back.” Not only is Allie’s writing style entertaining, but there is
such a great degree of honesty to it as well. I like that Allie doesn’t hold
back and doesn’t seem to care that she is a rather strange person. In fact, I
would try to be best friends with her if I could. So Allie, if you are reading
this, then perhaps we can write Hyperbole
and a Half Part Two. But I will warn you that I have no experience with
owning dogs since I am a crazy cat lady.
Check out Allie Brosh’s blog for more unfortunate
situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/.
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