Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

Furiously Happy is a collection of essays by the famous blogger, Jenny Lawson.  The essays center around her struggle with mental illness and her determination to live her life the fullest despite the hardships she faces.  As the cover suggests, the writing is a mixture of funny and absurd, and Lawson's distinctive voice guides the reader with wit and humor through some very sensitive topics like depression, self harm and the social stigmas associated with mental illness.

I greatly admire Jenny Lawson, and after reading this book, that admiration has only grown.  She is very honest and open about her diagnoses in Furiously Happy, and describes how depression, anxiety disorders, sleep disorders, compulsive behaviors, and more have affected her life.  When taken together, all of the mental illnesses she struggles with seem like too much for one person to bear.  It's incredible to me that Lawson is able to function on a day to day basis, never mind actually enjoy her life, write books, and run a successful blog.  As she explains, that's what being "furiously happy" is all about - taking control of her situation and being happy in spite of the odds against her.  Her theory is that people who struggle with depression and anxiety experience all of the extremes of emotion.  They have to struggle through the lowest lows, but they also experience the highest highs.  She is determined to enjoy the moments where she is happy and fight through the moments she is not. 

I definitely enjoyed this novel and there were several chapters that had me laughing out loud. Lawson's relationship with her husband is hilarious and her predilection for taxidermied animals is delightfully weird.  There can be no doubt that Lawson has a fantastic sense of humor that comes out loud and clear in her writing.  Aside from the book's entertainment value, it was also very interesting to explore how mental illness can impact someone's life.  As Lawson explains, there is a stigma surrounding mental illness. No one wants to talk about it, so it is poorly understood by those who don't struggle with it.  While everyone's experience with mental illness is unique, Furiously Happy is a window into how one woman functions.  Lawson's honesty about her feelings helped bring to me a deeper understanding of how depression works and the struggle to effectively treat it.

While there's a whole lot that Furiously Happy does right, there were a few elements that I didn't enjoy.  Unlike Lawson's first novel, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, there wasn't a logical narrative flow to the essays.  They could have been placed in any order and the book would still have made sense.  While the writing didn't seem outwardly disorganized, it didn't feel tight enough either.  I found myself wishing for some kind of chronological thread to hold onto.  I also thought some of the chapters were a bit forced, and trying too hard to be funny.  For example, one chapter is comprised of notes that Lawson wrote to herself while on sleeping pills.  The whole thing was nonsense, and while some of the notes were cute, it made me suspect that she had run out of things to write about and just stuffed all of her undeveloped essay ideas into one fragmented chapter.  Overall, while Furiously Happy was good, I didn't think it was as funny or as well-written as her first book.

However, despite my issues, I still enjoyed the novel.  It opens up an important dialogue about mental illness and inspires both those who struggle with it and those who don't.  Lawson's candor and humor are effective at bringing a deeper level of understanding to a topic that is difficult to talk about.  Any book that can shine a light into the shadowy places that exist in our world is well worth your time.  Furiously Happy is an inspiring and important read.