I Feel Bad
All Day. Every Day. About Everything.
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The inspiration for a television comedy from Executive Producer Amy Poehler, I Feel Bad is out now on NBC.
“Auslander’s idiosyncratic drawing style, with loopy lines that appear to unravel as though they’re loosely crocheted, is anxiety personified… [I Feel Bad] belongs to the brand of humor whose main gag is that mothers are human… [Auslander] goes dark and specific, transcending the theme.”—Anya Ulinich, The New York Times Book Review
Roz Chast meets Allie Brosh in this hilarious, unfiltered, and beautifully illustrated look at the infinite number of reasons the author experiences guilt, shame, regret and self-reproach in her daily life, and that maybe—just maybe—some of us can relate to as well.
In a series of 100 illustrations with accompanying text, Orli Auslander has captured a mood and emotional ambivalence that will be all too familiar for readers: trying to be the best wife, mother, and friend she can be, while simultaneously feeling shitty about virtually everything she does. Confronting her daily experience with dark humor and brilliant and brutal honesty, she shows us how being an overindulgent mother makes her feel as terrible as the times when she can't stand the sight of her kids; how saying yes to the wrong experiences and no to the right requests is equally bad; how her Jewish heritage complicates her relationships with her overly religious family and irreligious children; and how having a vagina is the ultimate inescapable struggle. With a distinctive, textured ink drawing style which brings to mind a female Robert Crumb and a neurotic Edward Gorey, I Feel Bad is a book that readers will buy for themselves and for a best friend, and where every reader will find the precise moment that Auslander voiced their own deepest anxiety in her poignant and hilarious illustrations.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
With its scrappy but inviting illustrations and explosively funny observations, I Feel Bad is a wonderfully universal exploration of our-of-control guilt. Whether she’s writing about work, religion, sex, politics, or just about everything else, Orli Auslander always finds humor in the embarrassing moves we make—or don't—with the people around us, managing to turn life's cringeworthy moments into cathartic, explosive laughter. It's not every day that a graphic novel inspires a sitcom, but we hope the Amy Poehler–produced series is as liberating as the source material!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Auslander feels bad about a lot of familiar things: "I'm high-maintenance.... I lie to my kids.... I only eat the pie crust." In a series of scribbly one-panel cartoons, she shares her neuroses about marriage, child rearing, parents, religion, sex, and on and on. Many are universal find a parent who hasn't used a bathroom break to hide from the kids but the more interesting are specific to Auslander's life as a woman of Middle Eastern Jewish background, sparring with a disapproving, sexist father (her fault, she says) and a brother who's been born again as a Hasidic fundamentalist (also her fault). Also perceptive are the side-by-side cartoons revealing the no-win situations she sets up for herself, such as feeling guilty both for making and not making the kids' birthday cakes from scratch. There are shining moments, but this type of cartoon confessional has been done better many times before, and Auslander's shaky artwork doesn't add much. She shouldn't feel bad about it, though.
