Allie Brosh: Hyperbole and a Half

Hi

I gave this book to my husband shortly after it came out and he enjoyed it very much.
He told me that the book deals with depression in a very relatable way and I’m interested in anything spreading awareness, having suffered from depression myself.
The book has 369 pages.

“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!”

I enjoyed this enormously. It is not laugh-out-loud funny but it’s very entertaining and it did make me giggle a lot.
The pictures are (while very crude and primitive) amazingly expressive and they capture the story perfectly.
The whole book is honest, witty, charming and very funny.

But the story of her depression is something quite different. It’s honest too, and even funny in a melancholic way but it is also relatable, understandable and just the plain truth about suffering from this disease. I recognized myself in her story and I think a lot of people will. I hope that whoever reads this, gains a better understanding of depression.

4 STARS

Happy reading.
Helena