It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too)

Today’s post is on It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too) by Nora McInerny Purmort. It is 304 pages long and is published by Harper Collins Publishing. The cover is grey with a rain cloud pouring into a pair of open hands. The intended reader is someone who likes memoirs both funny and moving. There is mild foul language, talk of sex, and no violence. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the eblurb- Twenty-seven-year-old Nora McInerny Purmort bounced from boyfriend to dopey "boyfriend" until she met Aaron-a charismatic art director and comic-book nerd who once made Nora laugh so hard she pulled a muscle. When Aaron was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer, they refused to let it limit their love. They got engaged on Aaron's hospital bed and had a baby boy while he was on chemo. In the period that followed, Nora and Aaron packed fifty years of marriage into the three they got, spending their time on what really matters: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, each other, and Beyoncé. A few months later, Aaron died in Nora's arms. The obituary they wrote during Aaron's hospice care revealing his true identity as Spider-Man touched the nation. With It's Okay to Laugh, Nora puts a young, fresh twist on the subjects of mortality and resilience. What does it actually mean to live your "one wild and precious life" to the fullest? How can a joyful marriage contain more sickness than health? How do you keep going when life kicks you in the junk? In this deeply felt and deeply funny memoir, Nora gives her readers a true gift-permission to struggle, permission to laugh, permission to tell the truth and know that everything will be okay. It's Okay to Laugh is a love letter to life, in all its messy glory; it reads like a conversation with a close friend, and leaves a trail of glitter in its wake. This book is for people who have been through some shit. This is for people who aren't sure if they're saying or doing the right thing (you're not, but nobody is). This is for people who had their life turned upside down and just learned to live that way. For people who have laughed at a funeral or cried in a grocery store. This is for everyone who wondered what exactly they're supposed to be doing with their one wild and precious life. I don't actually have the answer, but if you find out, will you text me?

Review- This book starts off with a bang and ends with one too. Purmort launches the reader into her life as it is falling apart. With losing her second child, her father, her husband all in about three months, and having to still parent her four-year-old son, Purmort has some tough times to live and for us to read. She had me laughing with her and then one paragraph later crying she holds her dying husband. Purmort uncovers her life for the reader from early loves to thinking about maybe wanting to fall in love again, one day not today. The chapters are short so we get more vignettes than long drawn out scenes and with some of what this book gives you, you do not want more than just a glimpse into the inner workings of so much pain. The honesty in her prose is both uplifting and gut-wrenching but never more than the reader can handle but I cannot say the same for Purmort herself. If you are looking for a moving memoir about life after death, then you should give this one a try.

I give this memoir a Four out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library’s Hoopla account.