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Allie Brosh.
Hyperbole and a Half: unfortunate situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened.
Square Peg. 2013

rating : 3 : worth reading
review : 17 December 2013

Hyperbole and a Half is a blog by twenty-something American, Allie Brosh. Her debut book – half new stories, half favourites from the blog – chronicles her ‘learning experiences’ and character flaws. It includes stories about her rambunctious childhood; owning a mentally challenged dog; and a moving comic account of her struggles with depression.

I’ve been following Allie Brosh’s blog for a while now, so when I saw the book version, I snapped it up.

I’ve tagged this “autobiography/humour”, but feel a bit uncomfortable doing so. How much is really autobiography (despite the photographic evidence of the goose)? And how much is really humorous, especially given the depression chapters?

Nevertheless, the manic drawings and deadpan text combine to give a truly unique view into someone’s life: the childhood traumas and mayhem (getting lost in the woods, having a tooth out before a party, the dinosaur costume, and more), the maladjusted simple dog and helper dog; the coping strategies for not actually being a nice person on the inside (here I feel the need to reassure: you may not be able to help what you are, but you can control what you do, and that’s what counts); and the experiences with depression.

Like the blog, this should be read an episode at a time, with gaps in between, rather than gulped in a single setting. Recommended.

Allie Brosh.
Solutions and Other Problems.
Square Peg. 2020

Q: Hello. Why did you do this?

A: Because I had some things I wanted to say. Ideas and stuff. But you can’t just say your ideas, so I did stories with my ideas secretly lurking inside them. Hopefully, it was not too sneaky of me to do this. I promise they’re real stories. It’s just that some of my ideas are so secretly present, and everybody who reads the book will need to deal with that. I’m trying to be more assertive.

Q: You say you did this because you wanted to ‘say’ things, but we noticed that you also drew 1,678 pictures…

A: Yes. Not good pictures, but there are 1,678 of them.

Q: What are the pictures of?

A: I don’t like being this confrontational, but I’m not going to describe all of the pictures. That’s why they’re pictures. So I don’t have to describe them.

Q: But how will people know what to expect if you don’t describe the picture?

A: They just have to trust me.

Q: They can trust you?

A: Yeah.

Q: Can you at least tell them a few things that are in the pictures? Like maybe put a list of objects, or say what the average picture is of, or maybe what kind of picture the book would be if it was a picture?

A: Lamp, dog, sun, walls, mom, dad, potato, universe, tragedy + comedy = time, ants (<- ed note: no ants are depicted in the book), sun, time, two balloons, mom, cat, bag, computer, face, face, face, face, face, mistake, the government (<- ed note: the government is also not directly depicted in the book), man, sand, bird, ideas, stereo. Average picture is brown and squiggly with eyes. The book would be a picture of a book.

Q: That was very helpful, thank you.

A: No problem. Glad I could help.