Lena is back with her unyielding honesty and giving us the behind the scenes of her come up, starting with her indie movie Tiny Furniture that led her to the show we all know and love; GIRLS, through the pain of being misunderstood in her previous book, chronic illness, rehab, break ups and moving into healing with this new book.

You’ve probably seen the headlines already cherrypicking the juiciest bits, Adam Driver was a douche, she cheated on Jack Antonoff and she fell out with the other girls. But that’s just the headline layer. Lena goes much deeper than that and bares her soul, if we just look a bit deeper than the gossip. Because while all of this spectacle is going on, Lena is a woman suffering and sacrificing her health, both body and mental, just to please other people – and us as an audience. 

If anything she exposes herself much more than anyone else in this book, continuing on her journey of people-pleasing.

“I watched her, wondering what I had ever done to earn all this love and luck. It was impossible, just then, to understand that you can earn a whole bunch and then spend it just as quickly.”

Adam Driver comes off as the same person as Adam on the show. A bit of a brute in his delivery without ever feeling the need to explain his actions or emotions. That’s hardly scandalous and I doubt it will hurt him in any way. (He’s a tall, rich, white, famous man after all.)

But she shares that she repeats things in eights just like Hannah on Girls when her OCD is acting up and actively sticks that label on herself that people have called the most relatable OCD scene ever to be shown on television. Unafraid to say out loud what people don’t even dare to think for themselves. 

I never realized just how much of Lena was in Hannah before and how much she allowed herself to share with the world. That takes balls bigger than any guy I ever met. 

She shares her health struggles, which are harrowing in and of itself, but add the shitshow that is the American healthcare system, insurance bullshit, and doctors violating their oath to do no harm and you’re just scratching the surface of how intense a chronic illness can be. And all the while I felt like she didn’t really ask for empathy or understanding, but felt more guilty for the things she wasn’t able to do. 

“The more I learned, the more I understood I wasn’t waiting for a cure. I was waiting for the bravery to reframe how I talked about what my body could do, to use words like “chronic” and “disability”. 

I laughed out loud several times, I cried for her when she was showing us her most vulnerable parts. And though I’ve consumed most of what she has produced over the years she never ceases to surprise and shock me with her honesty and crazy stories and I absolutely love it when people act batshit crazy without any form of filter.  (Feel free to message me when you read the Bruce Springsteen conversation! I laughed so hard and I’m dying to talk to someone about it!) 

In the end she talks about how she has found a way to work around her illness even though Hollywood is “permissive toward everything but human frailty”. But she still manages to create and produce, sometimes from a wheelchair and it makes you wonder what makes her so special that this industry keeps her around? I can’t answer that, but it’s a privilege not many have. Beautiful young women are spit out of Hollywood daily for gaining weight, aging, saying the wrong thing, or daring to stand up to a man. And yet here is Lena in spite of doing it all, louder than anyone, still in the thick of it. Still famesick. 

She says in the end that she stopped being invited to the Met Gala, but I’m pretty sure I saw her there yesterday surrounded by red feathers as she cosplayed an artistic blood stain. So I guess having a new bestseller gets you back on the invite list. Personally I love to see it, Hollywood needs more real people. 

Addendum: Lena, I just have to say – and I hate to say this to the woman who literally wrote the prequel to sex and the city, but Carrie did not have shoes in her stove, they were sweaters. I don’t know if this counts as a Mandela effects cause I asked the other person next to me and they also said shoes. It’s definitely sweaters! I looked it up. ❤