I've never seen Samantha Bee on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but her book amused me. It also sometimes horrified me - reading accounts of embarrassing moments from her childhood onward made me feel like a voyeur. There is such a thing as too much information! Yet I laughed out loud...
Bee's stepmother PG-yelling at a bear when they were hiking: “GO TO H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS!”
When Bee was a teenager involved in car thefts (“I don’t know what the hell I was thinking”) she describes her family's car: “there was no great black-market demand for boxy cars from Communist countries […] It was like driving Hitler’s mustache.”
When employed as a costume character in a children’s entertainment show: “The narrative was so vague and ridiculous that it could have been written by a basket of acorns that had fallen onto a laptop by accident.”
More hyperbole in reference to her grandmother’s obsession with American celebrities, who could not possibly have been born vaginally: “She insisted that they had emerged, glowing and smooth from their gossamer star nests, surviving by gently nibbling on the most tender leaves and shoots of spring; their twenty-four-inch-waisted bodies permanently draped in the spangly creations of Bob Mackie; the only discharge their tiny bodies could ever emit was in the form of a fragrant potpourri of organic matter that would make your tomatoes come in bigger than ever, should you ever be privileged enough to have one of them over for a garden party.”
Bee's comic essays about her life growing up in Canada aren't the sort that resonate with wisdom... but they sure are funny.
Readalikes: Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress (Susan Jane Gilman); Everybody into the Pool (Beth Lisick); I Was Told There'd Be Cake (Sloane Crosley).
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