Publishers Weekly
★ 05/08/2023
Morning Brew contributor Stone debuts with a witty collection of essays about growing up a perfectionist in the thinness-obsessed, tabloid-crazed 2000s and beyond. She charts her long struggle with body image, from being labeled a “seventeen-minute miler” in elementary school gym class and garnering praise for shedding “baby weight” in high school to eating issues that lingered into her 20s and the measure of bodily acceptance she eventually found through weight lifting. Elsewhere, she recalls growing up in a repressive evangelical home and struggling to reconcile how she could “be pure of heart when my brain was on twenty-four-hour taboo cinema mode,” bombarded by doubts about God’s existence and “major, major pervert” thoughts. Stone’s at her best when probing the psychological complexities of young womanhood, as when she details her college-age efforts to be a “cool” girl to attract men, including a blueberry vodka–swilling “upperclassman with a long Eastern European last name, a wry smile, and a tiny, tiny butt.” Stone’s painfully sharp observations will draw readers in, and her honesty will keep them enthralled. This will go a long way toward helping readers feel less alone. (July)
From the Publisher
"A sharply funny writer…for fans of Jessi Klein or Samantha Irby" — Booklist
“Many have tried, and many will try, to capture the sweet, innocent insanity of life as a young girl during the ’90s and 2000s. None have come close to the comedic perfection Lillian Stone nails again and again in Everybody’s Favorite.” — Glamour
"...Relatable, moving, and emotionally hilarious." — Vulture
“Stone’s painfully sharp observations will draw readers in, and her honesty will keep them enthralled. This will go a long way toward helping readers feel less alone.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“I love to hear funny people eviscerate themselves powerfully and with cutting humor. Lillian delivers in this nonstop review of her life, inner and, mostly, outer. Funny. Enjoy.” — Bob Odenkirk
“If adolescence is a dumpster fire, Lillian Stone is an intrepid dumpster diver, rescuing the bric-a-brac of a bygone, early internet era and holding it up for us to admire. And cringe at. It’s the figuring-it-outness of Stone’s work I most adore. In this finely crafted coming-of-age tale, Stone jubilantly dismantles shame, both of body and spirit. A book to fold in your back pocket and take on the train, to fill with stars and scribbles and squiggly underlines. Judy Blume and John Waters, please step forward to claim your love child.” — Greg Marshall, author of Leg
Kirkus Reviews
2023-04-24
Personal essays mining the author’s struggles to improve and, ultimately, accept herself.
Stone, a freelance humor and finance writer, introduces her debut essay collection with a piece about who she was in 2004, “on the cusp of puberty, preparing to plunge into a lifetime of deep, sweaty self-hatred.” She named her prepubescent shame and anxiety Madison, described as “a phantom formed by everything I’d never be” whose message to the author was, “Everything about you is wrong and gross, and everyone can tell.” The author recounts making a list of her failings, such as “cavernous pores and…social ineptitude,” in order to work her way through them and remake herself. While this original list has since been lost, Stone’s inner critic is alive and well. “Madison’s 2004 demands were nothing compared to the round-the-clock hellscape that is the internet,” she writes. The following essay, “Nothing’s Funnier Than Naked,” begins, “I was five the first time I felt weird about my boobs.” After cataloging a series of incidents involving what she calls “body shame,” the author shares her realization that obsessing over physical imperfections comes at the cost of forging connections. In a piece that recounts the effects of religion on her lifelong perfectionism, she notes, “Childhood Evangelicalism is packed with ready-made rituals designed to annihilate the obsessive-compulsive brain.” Regarding how she eventually abandoned religion: “I ditched the church, but I kept the fear.” A self-described “insufferable goody-two-shoes” by the time she started high school, the author admits that she has “no idea exactly who or why the people-pleasing took root.” The book closes with “Madison Forever,” in which she tells us that “Madison’s still here, representing the parts of myself I’d most like to ignore.” This stands in contrast to the rest of the largely surface-level text, in which Stone maintains a hyperfocus on these parts.
While Stone’s self-deprecating humor is occasionally endearing, the self-absorption and vapidity wear thin.
