The Bedwetter

Starred review from March 29, 2010
Demonstrating that her penchant for swearing began at an early age, comedian Silverman begins her hilarious memoir by describing how, at age three, she gleefully responded to her grandmother's offer of brownies with “shove 'em up your ass.” Growing up in New Hampshire (“where cows are well done and Jews are rare”), Silverman naturally gravitated toward performing and moved to New York, where she attended and eventually dropped out of New York University to pursue a standup comedy career. Mixing show business moments (she wrote for Saturday Night Live
for one season, but none of her sketches made it past dress rehearsal) with stories of her childhood and adolescence (punctuated by a persistent bedwetting problem), Silverman never shies away from poking fun at her own expense. Though she's best known for sexually explicit jokes, Silverman is able to address more serious subjects in the book without losing her edge, particularly her teenage struggle with depression and that her often abrasive public persona allowed her to “say what I didn't mean, even preach the opposite of what I believed.... It was a funny way of being sincere.” 8-page color insert.

June 28, 2010
In this somewhat disjointed but appealing memoir, comedian Silverman chirpily narrates anecdotes about growing up Jewish in New Hampshire, her struggles with depression and bedwetting, her efforts to make it in comedy, the fun she's had working on her (now canceled) Comedy Central show, and coping with the controversy her jokes generate. Silverman's comic timing enhances the text; her little-girl voice clashes well with her exuberant love for crudity and fart jokes, and lends the more serious sections an unexpected poignancy. A Harper hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 29).

May 1, 2010
Silverman is great on-screen, and even her film "Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic", less than an hour-and-a-half long, is not enough! Luckily, she's in print now and just as funny. This look back at the childhood and beginning career of Silverman, bed wetter extraordinaire, isn't a stab at a complete autobiography, though. It's more of a sketch that highlights particularly influential parts of growing up, like being a bed wetter, which lead to a career of delighting in potty humor. From her humble New England beginnings to her forays into crossing Asian American watchdog groups, fashion police, and various network censors, Silverman's loose collection of stories makes for great reading. Silverman is not known for self-censoring, and her book is filled with off-color language; what's more, at least one photograph makes the title inappropriate for school libraries. VERDICT For any reader who enjoys Silverman's stand-up and television work, her freshman literary effort is highly entertaining, provides a fascinating introduction to the person behind the persona, and should fly off the shelvesorder a few. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 12/09; 300,000-copy first printing; four-city tour; ebook ISBN 978-0-06-198707-6.]Audrey Snowden, Cleveland P.L.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2010
Comedian Sarah Silverman is an acquired taste. If you like orgasms, farts, and excrement, she is delicious. In her memoir, Silverman takes readers on a tour of the underground tunnel that is her mind, and believe me, it is as full of muck as the sewers of Paris. Only funnier. She comes by all this filth naturally. By the time she was three, her father had taught her every swearword known to man, and she quickly learned that spouting them on any occasion was adorable. (Also, yelling out statements like I love tampons in the grocery store was pretty cute, too.) But Silverman is not just writing this book to gross out her readers (though, honestly, thatand the moneyis probably the main motivation). She is also writing to tell what its like to be an outsider: a Jewish girl growing up in New Hampshire; a woman comedian in a notoriously male profession; and a bed wetter of epic proportions. On the latter topic, she layers her outing with jokes and pathos, but its the e-mails between her and her editor that show the truth of the old adage that comedy is tragedy plus time. She wants the subtitle of this to be Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee. He insists on pee-pee. Like so much of this book, its an absurdists delight.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)