This is a memoir by Jessica Lamb-Shapiro and I really, really enjoyed it. The author is the daughter of a psychologist who has tried to hit it big in the self-help book industry. (He also invents self-help games for children.) The first part of the book takes apart self-help books and had me laughing – she has a real deadpan sense of humor. Then she gets serious and discusses the pain of her mother’s suicide when she was two and her father’s inability to talk about her. The book is both funny and sad. Throughout the book she writes of self-improvement, and our enduring fascination with perfection.
