It will come as no surprise that this is not a light read, but this reflection on antisemitism is both interesting and informative. I particularly appreciated how it is gives context to some of the commentary that I commonly hear from Jewish friends and read by Jewish authors. One thing that stood out to me in particular is the way in which many  progressive Pro-Palestine movements' boycotts of Israeli companies is perceived as antisemitic even as many leaders of those boycotts reiterate that they distinguish between the State of Israel and Jewish people.  The explanation in this book is really compelling and also reminds us how close in time we are to the time before the Holocaust when Germans were encouraged not to buy from Jewish stores. Her writing is both so well researched and so emotionally compelling that I found myself leaving each section with more compassion for and understanding of why somethings are perceived as antisemitic even when non-Jews might resist that description. 

It took me a while to finish this book, so was reading it about six weeks ago when the lethal bombing attack at the protest in Boulder occurred and I was impressed by how it shifted how much it impacted how I thought about the aftermath of that incident.  The core idea in the book that hate crimes against Jews are only given attention to the extent that the narrative can be used for a purpose that distracts from the horror of antisemitic violence to the benefit of others played out in real time as I was watching.  Almost as soon as the news broke, the immigrant accused of the bombing was arrested and charged, but rather than using the moment to focus on hate crimes and violence, the federal government arrested and deported his  wife and children, bypassing due process, thus shifting the focus from his Jewish victims and instead to using the event for political gain just in exactly the manner the book describes.  You have to love when a book provides such relevant insight and analysis even it was published a few years ago.

Recommend.

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This book has a combination of things I usually do not like. 
 
First, I am not a fan at all of the social media influencer memoir.  I think somewhere fairly early in the pandemic, I overdosed on crappy ones that I got for free or that were recommended to me and I have not gotten over that.  They tend to have a number of features I do not like, such as referring back to what they posted, quoting those posts, and bragging about how early an adopter they were of a specific platform and how the fame they got and the money they made from said platform saved or ruined (or both) their lives. Many of these books are often compilations of blog posts that do not transcend mediums well when they get put into a book without a good editor. They are often repetitive in a way that reminds me of people who just tell the same few stories over and over again. 
 
Second, I tend not to love the writings of standup comics, especially ones who have a chaotic style of raunchy standup. I can take that in very small doses, but an entire 8 hour book is just too much.  The writing here felt a bit like Jenny Lawson (Let's Pretend This Never Happened), which I kind of just despised. 
 
Third, I usually do not like books read by the author. I often think they should have hired a professional with a voice I actually want to listen to, which I know might sound harsh, but I really love a good narrator and one way to tell a really good narrator is when you speed it up (which I virtually always do), you can still understand them clearly and their voice still conveys the emotion. This is not true of mediocre narrators and author are usually mediocre or worse, in my opinion.
 
While there were spots where she fell into the annoying "this is what I posted when I was an early adopter of instagram" context, it was short-lived.  She definitely had places that were slightly repetitive and other places where she went on too long about details that felt show-off-y to me without advancing the story which caused the narrative to lag a little. It felt like she really needed a more heavy handed editor.
 
That said, this book was, for the most part, an outlier on all fronts. It is very difficult to write trauma comedy, either for stand-up or in book form, and this is really trauma comedy at its best.  The places where she veers away from the style are the places that should have been cut. I particularly loved how she situated her complex relationship between humor and tragedy in the context of her cultural and familiar history. The intergenerational way in which her family used humor and laughter to survivor horrible things was so richly described here. She didn't have to directly talk about "rape jokes" to be talking about rape jokes told by survivors in her family.  It wasn't just that she decided one day to make comedy about trauma, she explains how this was passed down as a way to survive. I found it insightful, poignant, and (yes, even) funny. Through the bets parts, I found myself on the verge of both laughing and crying and in a place of acceptance that this was ok and maybe could even be healing  It reminded me of Hannah Gadsby in this respect.
 
Recommend. But maybe skim through the parts in the middle about buying the expensive purses and the celebrity name dropping parts.
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A Holocaust novel, this book reminded me so much of the more well-known novel The Book Thief that I actually had to make sure that I wasn't misremembering that it was the same book--or at least the same author.  While The Book Thief was narrated by Death, The Little Liar was narrated by Truth.  The story is, of course, both incredibly depressing while also being a story of resilience for those who survived and it does a good job of highlighting the different ways the characters survived and what it cost them. I found the respect for the disparate impacts of trauma on different people to be relatively sophisticate and interesting. Some of the plot twists felt farfetched and the over-done theme of the non-Jews who, out of no where, stepped in to help was trite. The use of Truth as the narrator felt a bit gimmicky.  I had some sympathy for this, since it must be difficult to find a fresh way to engage with material this dark that will find an audience and yet I just found the narration scheme to be distracting.  I am likely in the minority in this respect, though, since I had a similar reaction to The Book Thief.  
 
Not recommended. 
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