Review: Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West
My rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars

For as long as I’ve been part of the size accep­tance move­ment (oh, excuse me, it’s “body pos­i­tive” now!), I’ve read sur­pris­ing­ly few books about it or by its lead­ers. I con­sid­er Lindy West one of those lead­ers. Just by being “loud,” hap­py, fem­i­nist, and unapolo­get­i­cal­ly fat, she is a role model.

While parts of this book are about gut-wrench­ing­ly sad times in her life, this is over­all a very upbeat book. Lindy is fun­ny even when she’s talk­ing about ter­ri­ble things. I caught a cou­ple of minor “oop­sies” as far as the nar­ra­tion goes, but that just made her more real as a per­son to me.

Anoth­er thing that I encoun­tered in this book as a first: she’s been sub­ject­ed to even more online harass­ment, stalk­ing, and threats than I have, which is rare. She became a tar­get by being a fat jour­nal­ist, and then real­ly gath­ered the ire of the neck­beards liv­ing in their par­ents’ base­ments by stand­ing up against rape jokes. I hate that she’s expe­ri­enc­ing it, but it felt good to com­mis­er­ate with her, so to speak.

I whole­heart­ed­ly rec­om­mend this book.

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