You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery
Author: Mamrie Hart
(Plume)
A-
YouTube star Mamrie Hart has dominated best-seller lists this year with her debut novel, You Deserve a Drink. Since she announced its impending arrival last December, fans of the comedienne have anxiously awaited its advent nationwide.
I’ll admit, I was skeptical. While I think Hart’s channel is funny (especially when Grace Helbig and Hannah Hart drop by), and even though I enjoyed her movie, Camp Takota, I just wasn’t sure her brand of humor could translate into text. After all, it’s easier to captivate audiences with five-minute videos wherein you can use accents and props than it is to tell a joke in 300 pages.
Fortunately, Hart doesn’t disappoint.
The book begins with a bang: Fellow comedienne Grace Helbig shares a short summary of her friendship with Hart before warning you that nothing in the following book is “exaggerated, fabricated, or G-rated.” That was all it took; I was effectively drawn into the following text without hesitation, although I’m sure the drink recipes at the beginning of every chapter helped as well.
Hart’s storytelling technique closely resembles a parade of elephants that have been incorrectly prescribed Adderall; the discourse is one funny instance after another, strung along in a rollercoaster-like fashion that only seems to ascend. Chapters she designates as “Quickshots” offer small glances of happenings in her life, allowing you to catch your breath before the avalanche continues. Perhaps the crowning gem is her tone of self-deprecation disguised as pretentiousness that leaves you thinking, “I need to be her friend, even if it means wiring her money to Kuala Lumpur when she’s stranded.”
The distinction of each story makes it nearly impossible to choose a favorite. Do you prefer Hart as she owns up to being a child with a crush on the Brawny Paper Towel man, or Hart as the adult who spent a road trip alternating between smoking pot and eating Dairy Queen Blizzards? Other notable funnies include a story about finding refuge from tan lines at an all-male nudist resort, an exotic dancer throwing away her contact lens to avoid any “random coochie juice,” and a disastrous torch made of maxi pads and lighter fluid.
Hart’s book is the adaptation of the adventures you either had in college and are still apologizing to your liver for, or you didn’t, and have spent much of your life putting on your best critical face while wishing you had the guts to accidentally set yourself on fire at a Flaming Lips concert. It isn’t always actual laugh-out-loud funny, but You Deserve a Drink is a textual vacation. Even the packaging — the cover, the bio, the summary on the back — is packed full of cheeky humor that is somehow irresistible.
Like a few comedians-turned-writers before her, Hart has managed to successfully take her craft and turn it into a portable media beyond viral videos. However, also like many others before her — Amy Poehler’s Yes, Please, Grace Helbig’s Grace’s Guide, and Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl — it seems like a humorous book that is good for a summer read, but maybe not to go back to anytime soon. It lacks the kind of everlasting quality that would entice me to do more than recommend it to a friend and place it on my coffee table after reading. Unlike that last shot at the bar, however, it’s definitely worth it. Take my word for it: You really do deserve a drink.
