Embarrassed, much?
In Much To Your Chagrin, Suzanne Guillette re-counts her personal humiliations for your laughing pleasure
By Beth Dugan
Published: May 28th, 2009 | 1:50pm
When I get embarrassed for other people, my eyes water in mute empathy with what they are going through. Much to Your Chagrin: A Memoir of Embarrassment, a debut work by Suzanne Guillette, was a book that brought tears of embarrassment to my eyes several times. Guillette, a recent MFA grad who lacks a direction in her life after leaving school and ending a long-term relationship, starts collecting embarrassing stories from friends and strangers for a book called Oh Shit!
In gathering the stories she learns her own gaffes and misadventures were far more interesting and revealing about who she was and where she was going in life. The book is written in a close second person and chronicles not only the search for embarrassing stories but also Guillette’s romantic adventures with her book agent, Jack.
Guillette’s style is confessional, breezy and sometimes extremely funny. As the narrative of Guillette’s struggle with writing her book, her burgeoning relationship with Jack, and the other minutiae of her life progresses, the story is punctuated by embarrassing stories from Guillette’s past as well as stories she is collecting from others, which gives the tale a refreshing shot of humor and lightheartedness. Many of the stories are of the bathroom variety with clothing mishaps and social disasters thrown in for good measure. They will absolutely make you squirm in your seat.
Guillette’s story is complete with trips to her therapist and has a constant stream of inner monologue that explains Guillette’s every whim, including the entire thought process behind buying champagne and McDonald’s for an early “business” meeting in the park with Jack. The close second person can be wearing when the inner workings of Guillette’s mind do little to move the story forward, but ultimately the unflinching look into her own motivations and actions is fascinating and cringe-inducing at the same time; like a car wreck, there is much about this book that is like a gapers block.
Somewhere between a good beach read and a more substantive work of introspection, Much to Your Chagrin is entertaining and engaging and makes your fervently wish to never be the person who flashes her elderly neighbors or poops on the front seat of her car.
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Much to Your Chagrin: A Memoir of Embarrassment
By: Suzanne Guillette
432 pages, $25.00
Issue #34
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