I found *My Booky Wook* laugh-out-loud funny, but not for the faint of heart. Brand's honesty is almost child-like at times, except that he's dealing with very adult topics like depression, sex addiction, and drug use.
That honesty was precisely what made the read so compelling for me. Brand has a unique gift for non-pompous self-reflection, and refuses to bowdlerize his life just because it might offend some. His description of what it's like to take heroin deserves a place right up there with The Velvet Underground's song. It's loving and funny and unapologetic, while still acknowledging the horrific damage that addiction brings.
Brand's prose, like his personality, is deliberately flamboyant. I found myself feeling that, by all logical reasoning, I should be put off by his deliberately Dickensian flourishes. But self-knowledge saves all, and Brand combines his rococo prose with colloquial diction, self-mockery, and traces of his real, non-elite accent. In this regard, I kept thinking that Brand's style was akin to that of a very dirty P.G. Wodehouse.
The result was (dare I say it) addictive. I couldn't put the damned book down, and after finishing it I had to immediately lend it out so I wouldn't re-read it a million times.
Like all great comedians, Russell Brand turns his personal pain into comedy. Given the variety of individual senses of humor, it's impossible to guarantee that you'll find this book funny. But if you're not easily offended, you'll probably be laughing. Even if you are easily offended, you can treat this as a very honest memoir of sex and drug addiction, and be shocked that Brand tells it as a funny story.
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