Allie Brosh is known and loved for her funny true stories told hyperbolically (on her highly popular and award-winning blog Hyperbole and a Half) and her intentionally crude but adorable accompanying drawings once described as “dysfunctional doodles.” In the last 18 months or so, however, her readers have been concerned about her mood disorder, the subject of her 2011 post “Adventures in Depression.”
In it Brosh states that she “just woke up one day feeling sad and helpless for absolutely no reason.” She then proceeds, in her characteristic style, to illustrate with humor and poignancy how it just gets worse from there.
The followup came last week—though she’s been working on it close to a year—in the form of “Depression Part Two.”
Robert T. Gonzalez (io9.com) writes: “Depression – both for those suffering from it, as well as those affected by its clutch on friends and loved ones – can be an immensely difficult thing to wrap one’s head around. Brosh’s very personal treatment of the subject is hilarious, and heartbreaking, and highly affecting – but it’s also a very lucid description of some of the most impenetrable aspects of major depression.”
Brosh’s upcoming book, Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened, “chronicles the many ‘learning experiences’ Brosh has endured as a result of her own character flaws, and the horrible experiences that other people have had to endure because she was such a terrible child. Possibly the worst child. For example, one time she ate an entire cake just to spite her mother,” states the publisher’s description.
Indeed. Read “The God of Cake” on her blog and find out what happens when a certain child is deprived of cake.
Her publisher bio informs us that Allie Brosh started writing at a young age, “ever since her mom tricked her into writing a story to distract her from her immediate goal of wrapping the cat in duct-tape.”
I hear that her new book will feature a mixture of past blog pieces and “50%” new content. Stay tuned.