In this frank reflection on illness, fame, sex, and everything in between, the mind behind the hit series Girls asks whether fulfilling her creative ambitions has been worth the pain.
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.
A feast of keen observations and psychological insights delivered vividly, with candor and wit ... Her narrative is frankly and stringently personal, but it also provides a wide-angle view of show business itself ... The impressive scope of Girls and its momentous cast depended on that system, and Dunham learned a lot, fast, about the practice of TV and the milieu in which it’s made—and, indeed, about the harsh realities of the big time, which she writes about so incisively in Famesick.
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.
