This is an earnest, exposing book ... Its quick hits of wit...are like sniffs from an oxygen mask ... It has a whiff of the old Hollywood tell-all, indie edition, with trash bags for curtains in an Eagle Rock group house ... It’s hard not to see this book as an acidulous regurgitation of all that Hollywood forced Dunham to eat.
An ideal celebrity memoir with the added bonus of being written by someone who can actually write. Both the memoir and Dunham remain lightly enamored with celebrity, name-dropping just enough ... An attestation to the value of slowing down, going home, and shutting the fuck up so you have something to say again ... Doesn’t have heroes or villains, just several people trying their best and still failing.
Dunham has actually learned from her garrulous and unfiltered excesses—she’s got stories to tell in Famesick that blow the roof off, but she’s wielding them with precision this time around ... The revelations in Famesick feel much more loaded, as though Dunham is settling scores, but also justifying herself ... What I longed for more of, in Famesick, was what the writer Leslie Jamison has called 'the infinitude of any given life as a site of reckoning and truth.' The paradox of Famesick seems to be that the more famous you become, the less you have to defend turning yourself into a subject. And so largely missing from the book is a quality I’ve always loved about Dunham’s work...her impulse to make broader meaning out of her experiences ... I’m not quite sure what the meaning of Famesick is, beyond getting certain things on the historical record. It is, in parts, riveting. Dunham is still among our funniest living writers ... It feels unfair to call a memoir self-indulgent, but this one can be, at least for an artist with such talent.
It occurred to me while reading Famesick that this may be the first Dunham work built on deep hindsight. I’d gotten used to hearing about her life events right after they happened ... Dunham finds a way to hang her experiences on a scaffolding of normal feeling, describing the kinds of nausea and social panic one can experience even without an HBO deal ... The old urge to confess is alive. Her omissions are noticeable as well.
Engrossing ... Famesick is a pleasure to consume, its sentences seductive, its rhythms soothing. It leads to a fast read, but the sentences never feel empty ... Oddly, from a writer who has been consistently ridiculed for TMI, I wanted to know more ... For every short scene or shocking detail tossed offhand, there are places when I wanted to ask Dunham to stop, to slow down, to say more about the actual feeling. Because the feelings are sometimes lost ... Can you still be a baby at 40? There’s actually great art to be made from that question ... So it is frustrating that as the book progresses, Dunham seems to want to explore that tension less and less.
We all know someone like Dunham, who takes up all the space in the room, who needs constant reassurance, who is brilliant but exhausting and always on the verge of self-destruction. In Famesick, this unfathomable personality type becomes a little easier to get a grip on ... The true value of Famesick is its insight into those people who really do live through their work. It is a rare analysis of the process of making art, and its neurotic effect on the nervous system when there is such a fine line between fiction and truth.
A memoir about illness as well as Dunham’s most evocative subject across all her work: heartbreak, her forever muse. These are the parts of Famesick that feel most in tune with Dunham’s fictional work — Girls, yes, but also the heartbreak of Sharp Stick and Catherine Called Birdy — where the comedy is solid but the fraught emotional relationships torment and boggle and compel the viewer far more than the marriage plots ... What makes Dunham’s writing so singular (and has for years) is her ability to capture that which lacks closure or simplicity.
Confirms her talents as a writer of prose as well as scripts, quickly establishing an intimacy that allows her to weave together the funny, the heartbreaking and the grotesque ... At some 400 pages it can feel a little bloated, scenes a little repetitive, and the verve of the early sections lags in the middle. But in its portrayal of the ecstasy, heartbreak and sheer thrill of what it is to be young and lost, Famesick reaffirms Dunham’s status as a generational voice.
Famesick sheds almost all the Richard Curtis-isms to find that old, controversy-courting Dunham alive and – if not exactly well – then learning to cope with it ... The book is scattergun and sometimes lacking in self awareness ... Also undeniably frank and exhaustive: a lifetime of therapy condensed into something you could conceivably rip through in a weekend ... Dunham doesn’t always make it easy to feel sorry for her, though. There are moments big and small where her decision-making seems questionable ... And yet, there’s an honesty and a fluency to her prose that makes her hard to dismiss ... Dunham is able to write about the painful parts of life in a way that feels both intimate and universal.
Weaves a familiar tale: a preternaturally talented, hard-working young woman finds herself thrust into the glittering talons of the Hollywood dream machine ... For all the sadness, betrayal and score-settling – and there’s a lot – Dunham maintains her sense of humour ... Famesick makes clear that the public shaming of Dunham was a case of blatant misogyny and mass transference: somehow this one slightly annoying but ultimately well-meaning young comedian was made to answer for everything that went wrong with Hillary Clinton and the liberal girlbossification of feminism ... Dunham knows her acute desire for approval is 'repellent', but after everything, who could blame her for wanting to be liked?
Candid ... The memoir is both a psychological nightmare – what if you got everything you ever wanted, and were tortured for it, in public, for ever? – and a grim body horror ... Dunham’s career has been marked by a compulsive form of candour; this memoir is no different. It is written in her characteristically direct, chatty, comic voice, both self-absorbed and self-aware ... On page and on screen, few people are willing to be as human as Lena Dunham.
This memoir is an astonishing tour de force, blending Dunham’s characteristic self-revelation with her compellingly quirky voice ... Through most of the ups and downs of her account, Dunham’s weird humour prevails ... Full of fun lines, strange scandals and drama, recounted with Dunham’s unique levels of self-disclosure and honesty.
An explanation of her CV’s gappiness and a reminder of how brilliant she can be. It’s melancholic without being self-pitying ... She’s back working. 'I have found a way to do this job I love,' she writes. Famesick makes me hope she never has to stop again.
I’m still trying to figure out what to make of Lena Dunham’s new memoir, Famesick ... At times incredibly witty and sharply observed, at others self-pityingly indulgent. But what I can say for sure is that it is the most aggressively millennial thing I’ve ever read ... The best parts of Famesick are about Dunham’s parents, both artists ... Funny, yet full of pathos, Dunham at her best ... The change from the Dunham of Girls is less in the actor than it is in the audience. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can finally empathize with her.
Reads less like a memoir and more like a manifesto against the public's negative perception of her. While there are glimpses of self-reflection, what Famesick lacks is the accountability and wisdom that comes with age ... I came into this book expecting a level of reflection that comes with the wisdom of your thirties, only to find that while Lena is no doubt a master of confessional writing, her flowery prose cannot mask the stink of a deep-seated victim complex ... Famesick is ultimately a missed opportunity for Lena to be truly vulnerable.
Frank...unsparing ... Though the subject matter is heavy, Dunham’s self-deprecating humor and penchant for gossipy anecdotes provide crucial counterweight. Readers put off by the author’s past brashness need not apply, but fans of Girls and Dunham’s previous book will be more than satisfied.
