Lori Duff Writes

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh is not like any other book. I guess it is a memoir of sorts, but that really doesn’t tell you much.

The quality of the book itself is worth the price of admission. The pages are thick and glossy like a high quality coffee table book. Each chapter is printed on a different color of paper. The colors of the bizarre illustrations are bright and eye catching.

And what about those bizarre illustrations? You’ll recognize some of them, as they have been co-opted in popular memes. On the one hand, most of these drawings look vaguely like someone in kindergarten drew them. On the other hand, no six year old on the planet could give such crude drawings such expression. Don’t let the simplicity of the artwork fool you. That strange blonde ponytail, rendered only as a yellow triangle, is kind of a mood antenna. The people are stick figures, but the dogs are more realistically rendered, and that may go for their personalities in the text, as well. The art is wildly expressive and, at times, might break your heart. But only sometimes and not mostly. Mostly it will make you laugh loud, long peals of laughter that will embarrass everyone around you, but you won’t notice because you’ll be laughing too hard.

I guess you’d call it a graphic novel, but it isn’t a graphic novel, in that it isn’t fiction. That’s not generally my favorite form, but this is brilliantly pulled off and is a true work of creativity.

I’m not doing a good job of describing this. Read it and see for yourself. Click below for more information and a link to the Amazon page.

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Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.