Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas

Humorous essays about Jenny Allen s attempt to make sense of the baffling and annoying world around herIn Can I Borrow That?, a collection of first-person essays and humor pieces, Jenny Allen asks the tough questions: Why do people say It is what it is ? What s the point of fat-free half-and-half? W [...]
Visa längre beskrivning

Humorous essays about Jenny Allen s attempt to make sense of the baffling and annoying world around herIn Can I Borrow That?, a collection of first-person essays and humor pieces, Jenny Allen asks the tough questions: Why do people say It is what it is ? What s the point of fat-free half-and-half? Why don t the women detectives on TV carry purses, and where are we supposed to think they keep all their stuff? And haven t we heard enough about memes?Reporting from the potholes midway through life s journey, Allen addresses these and other more serious matters, like the rude awakenings of being single after twenty-five years, of mothering a teenager, and of living with a serious illness. She also discusses life s everyday trials, like the horrors of attempting a crafts project, the anxieties of being a houseguest, and the ever-changing rules of recycling. Allen is a performer at heart her one-woman show I Got Sick Then I Got Better premiered in 2009, and she regularly acts in other plays and she brings that same spirit to these thirty-five short essays, which read like the work of a female Dave Barry. Writing on places both real (like a swag den for celebrities at Sundance and the parking lot at L.L.Bean s flagship store) and imaginary (a Buddhist retreat attended by Martha Stewart, Elmer Fudd s psychotherapy appointment), Allen s wit and compassion give a fresh slant on the vicissitudes of day-to-day, and not so day-to-day, life."