Book Review: Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny  Lawson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What strikes you about Jenny Lawson’s “Furiously Happy” first and foremost is the smiling raccoon adorning the cover of the book that just makes you want to pick it up and find out why it’s one there. However before Lawson explains about the smiling raccoon, she has succeeded in sucking you into her hilarious journey of living furiously happy.

While “Furiously Happy” is Lawson’s second book, one does not have to have read her first one to quickly find one entrapped in her fascinating misadventures that many a time bring a smile to your face. The degrees of amusement go from the mildly fun to cringe-worthy hilarity—think Ross in the last three seasons of Friends—in a rollercoaster of events from Lawson’s own childhood to being a wife and mother herself. Between the humor are chapters in which Lawson talks about her numerous mental illnesses and their resulting dark side. For those not aware of Lawson’s health, she is upfront at the very beginning on why she is writing this book and it’s her own dealing with her mental illness that makes her want to live as the book says furiously happy.

While this rollercoaster of emotion prevents reading this book in a single setting—it took me many in all honestly—that’s okay because Lawson wants her readers to think. Here is a woman who is many mental illnesses, she is taking medication and getting therapy but when she has one of her bad days or spells she can look back at all the funny things she’s done in her life by just living furiously happy to keep her from doing anything hurtful to herself. For readers dealing with some of the same issues as her, the knowledge that someone else is feeling like them and keeps on going is a positive. And for readers like myself who do not suffer any mental illnesses, this book is a challenge to take steps to help our friends and family who do deal with mental health if we aren’t already as well as taking advantage of our own good fortune to live “Furiously Happy” because you never know when you might need those humorous memories.


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