Anonymous – A Fucked Up Life in Books

“A memoir, viewed through books…”

NO MAJOR SPOILERS

I’ve never read a book by an anonymous author before, but the writer here isn’t really anonymous, as she’s someone I follow on Twitter. @bookcunt caught my eye a while ago, she tweets about books a lot and is quite sweary. If her twitter handle offends you, you’re probably not going to like this book, so we’ll weed you out right here.

Apart from the title I had no idea what to expect from this book at all. It’s actually exactly what the author says, A Fucked Up Life in Books, with each chapter, or story associated to the book she was reading at the time.

Now I love literary nods in books. I cannot tell you how much I absolutely adore to hear the name of one of my favourite novels mentioned within a novel that I’m reading, and working on the star scale for how good a book is, one that mentions a previous book that I have read automatically gets an extra star. I also love characters that read and love to read. It stands to reason I suppose that we love to see ourselves mirrored in the novels that we read.

Based on that alone, I loved this book and found it difficult to put down. It’s just a series of great stories, and each stands alone. You could pick this up and read a couple of stories and put it down, pick it back up in a couple of months (if you can put it down), and read a couple more. That said, as a complete story from beginning to end it’s beautiful, funny, tragic, and very, very sweary! What’s more, much of it made me feel as though someone had taken my own life story, changed a few key points and sold it back to me!

I laughed, I may have sniffed a little, and I empathised like mad along the way. I already really loved following @bookcunt on Twitter, but I like her even more now, and if she were to release another book I’d be buying it on the release date!

If you’re looking for classic literature to educate you, full of big words, wise ideas and such, then you might not want to read this. However, if you want a book that feels like having your best mate over on a Saturday night, drinking a bottle of wine together and having her tell you her life story in a very loud, sweary way, then this is the book for you!

I’ve read lots of books that I wished I hadn’t taken so long to get round to reading; I’ve read lots of books that I wished I could read for the first time again, but this is the only book I’ve ever read that I wished I’d written.