How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don’t
Written and Narrated By: Lane Moore
Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
For, like, if you’re alone. Like, really, really alone…
No, I’m serious. This audiobook is for, like, people with no friends. For people who were, perhaps, raised by raccoons. And even then, it’s for people who were disowned by those raccoons because they just couldn’t get into shiny objects or something.
No friends, no family. Lane Moore starts the book with pointing out: It’s for people who don’t know whom to put down in the Emergency Contact Number line on official forms.
Cuz, see, it’s like this. Lane has nobody. No one. Zippo. Her father was abusive; her mother was not there; her entire family split apart and kept to themselves. And her friends? Well, the closest ones to her dumped her. Usually for a girl crush, for being kinda sorta super duper needy. She states that she doesn’t resent those who have at least one person they can count on, but over and over, she goes on to say she can’t relate to that type of person and they probably can never hope to relate to her.
So, who, you ask, can benefit from listening to How to Be Alone? Practically no one, especially if you don’t wanna feel like dirt for having soooooome support soooooooomewhere in your life. I guess the audiobook is mostly for those who want a bit of entertainment. And I use that word since I can’t figure what the heck kinda word is more precise. How to Be Alone is less of a How-To book, and more of a Memoir of Hell. Yes, I know, I know: It definitively states that it’s a Personal Memoir, but I thought there’d be more tips and encouragement for those who are feeling a trifle bereft, a trifle lonely. Instead, we get her story of bad parents/family, friends who betray, boyfriends (and girlfriends, as she’s Bi) who are insane, and even men who abused her when she was a teenager and trying to find her way in life.
Don’t get me wrong. The woman is hilarious. I was really, really impressed with how she can make heartbreaking pain into something worth a laugh-out-loud moment. I s’pose that’s why I used the word “entertainment”. Cuz this is a frightfully funny audiobook. (I must say, I did totally relate when she posited that, when you grow up surviving your childhood, you have a tendency of getting into awful scrapes later because you’ve already been through the worst). So, see? I related even though I have plenty of love in my life, and I chalk that up to Lane’s bare honesty.
Plus, she narrates this herself, and boy can she carry a joke off (I can’t. You should listen to me try to relay one. Pathetic, really). She also has a very sweet voice which comes in handy as she sings a song she’s written for a guy who was her latest love… even tho’ she’d yet to meet him in person.
A jolly good audiobook if you’re not looking for wisdom.
Even if you weren't raised by raccoons.
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