Life is a Circus Run by a Platypus by Allison Hawn

Individually, probably all of them are funny as hell, but the rhythm gets to be monotonous. The same format kind of dragged after a while: Introductory background information, followed by the setup, followed by the crux of the wacky hijinks, followed by the usually tongue-in-cheek moral of the story. It’s kind of a cute format for a short story collection, and some of the funniest little truisms emerge in these kernels of knowledge, such as: “Even the simplest task can turn into a fireball” and “If the soup tastes funny, it is appropriate to ask in which decade it was made.”

This conclusion is often introduced with a variably clever riff on “what can we learn from this?” One of my favorites was: “What kernels of knowledge can be picked from the cob of my experience?” But it really doesn’t matter whether these often outlandish tales are true or not, because they’re short, they’re amusing, and they always end with a handy little moral-of-the-story section. It’s more the kind of hyperbole you use when you tell a friend about a hilarious incident at work and you feel the need to embellish the details for the sake of a good story…and just in case the truth isn’t as funny to everyone else as it is to you. Not the fisherman’s tale kind of exaggeration, though. They purport to be based on the Allison Hawn’s own experiences, but I think it’s safe to say that they’re somewhat exaggerated.

So let me attempt to parse through it.īasically, it’s a collection of short stories. Here is an interesting book that I both loved and hated-and now that I’m finished with it I really couldn’t tell you how I felt about it overall.

Life is a Circus Run by a Platypus by Allison Hawn