Adult braces : driving myself sane / Lindy West.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In New York Times bestselling author Lindy West's ambitious memoir, she brings readers along on an uproarious cross-country road trip as she unpacks her last few tumultuous years, rediscovers herself, and reinvents her marriage in the process.



Through Shrill-- the book and then the Hulu series--Lindy West became an inspiration. To this day she is stopped on the street and hailed as a beacon of empowerment by women who felt badly for not conforming to a narrow set of societal norms--thin, straight, compliant. But behind the scenes, Lindy never felt like she was the self-actualized woman fans made her out to be. When she found herself in the throes of a deep depression, with her marriage and sense of self-worth hanging in the balance, she knew she needed to make a change.



In Adult Braces , Lindy shares the story of her rock bottom, and of the journey she took to claw her way out of it. With her trademark candor and sense of humor, she examines her post- Shrill emotional implosion, her shifting feelings about traditional marriage, and her search for her long-lost self. She also tracks the highs and lows of her journey, from eye-opening natural wonders and kitschy roadside attractions to lackluster tourist traps and campground epiphanies.



The result is an engaging and laugh-out-loud narrative of becoming as Lindy transforms from a passenger into the active navigator of her own life.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

West (Shit, Actually) blends her signature sharp wit with endearing vulnerability in this luminous memoir of a cross-country road trip she took to rebuild herself and her marriage. Spurred by her love of the Beach Boys song "Kokomo," West rented a van to drive from Seattle to Key West after learning that her husband, Aham, had another partner and wanted a polyamorous marriage. In between humorous missives from RV campgrounds ("I am self-actualized now! I'm not flirting with a city slicker who tried to light a campfire with just a log and a match!"), West writes candidly about her struggles with being a public face for the body positivity movement while sometimes "feel bad in my body." With unblinking resolve, she also autopsies the effects of masking her feelings of inadequacy with humor and a suffocating dependency on her husband: "I want to be desirable, but I do not know how to be desired." A defecating otter and a seven-year old in a Trump hat also make appearances, bumping up against indictments of comedy's mistreatment of women and the bruising effects of skinny-worship. The result is a madcap, rewarding journey that demystifies the unsexy work of self-actualization. Agent: Gary Morris, David Black Literary. (Mar.)

Kirkus Book Review

When in doubt, hit the road. The author of a memoir (Shrill, 2016) and two essay collections (The Witches Are Coming, 2019, andShit, Actually, 2020), West tackles big subjects here. The first to arrive are the consequences of polyamory, an unusual arrangement proposed by her husband and now coming home to roost in the form of a second partner--and more besides. Beset by spiraling self-esteem, to say nothing of having to wear the corrective dental apparatus of the title, West has a gift for making metaphors of her situation: "Our teeth are floating, each loose and alone in tissue," she writes, and alas, so are we, too, capable of being pushed together "if we're willing to move through the pain of it." A second issue is that West is "fat"--her word--in a society that worships slenderness, revealing that "here's the truth: Sometimes I feel bad in my body." For all that, West manages to extract humor in the many odd moments she finds herself in while taking a restorative drive from Seattle to Key West, Florida, and back again: She lampoons the stereotype of her Washington home as being half granola types and half "agitating to become part of Idaho so they can legally shoot the mayor if he tries to enforce seat belt laws." She goofs on the fundamentalists who travel to a creationist destination in Nebraska: "Do the locals go to the Boneyard Creation Museum again and again to bask in the pleasure of knowing that Jesus might have cured a diplodocus of leprosy?" And, memorably, she writes that a campground bathhouse "looked like a serial killer's toy box." Amid the humor, though, are moments of great insight, many clearly born of keeping a careful eye out while passing through "this ludicrously large country," others born of heartache, as when she sighs, "Lust is too much like hunger, and I am not allowed to be hungry." A well-realized, candid memoir that reveals an unconventional approach to life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.