We’ve been absolutely dying for the release of Lena Dunham’s memoir Not That Kind Of Girl since she signed the book deal the year before last, and if an extract released yesterday is anything to go by, she’s going to have a bestseller on her hands.
Dunham provided the respected New Yorker magazine with a lengthy extractfrom the upcoming book, detailing her struggle with OCD as a child which ultimately led her to meet her best friend, Audrey Gelman. The piece is an insightful look into to the extent of Lena’s neurotic thoughts as a child, acknowledging her issues with a wry sense of humour:
‘I’m with Chris Conta, our school nurse, who has a perm and wears holiday sweaters all year round,’ she writes. ‘She has a no-nonsense approach to health that comforts me. She presents me with hard facts (very few children develop Reye’s syndrome in response to aspirin) and tells me that polio has been eradicated in America. She takes me seriously when I explain that I’ve been exposed to scarlet fever by a kid on the subway with a red face.’
She reveals so much about herself in this wonderfully written, essay-length extract, we get the feeling her memoir’s going to be a seriously informative ‘Encyclopedia of Lena’ type thing. She mentions her boyfriend (assuming she's talking about her current love, Jack Antonoff in the piece), casually inserting that they went shopping for furniture together and basically share the same taste, so we are living for the long-form version of how they met, and hopefully the book will feature the ins and outs of the initial mutual crush and early dating life.
Based on this preview alone, we’re pre-ordering the book and counting the days till its release. Literally; it’s coming out in exactly 25 days.
In case you’re wondering what else you can expect from the book here’s what Lena hopes you will gain from reading it:
‘If I could take what I’ve learned and make one menial job easier for you, or prevent you from having the kind of sex where you feel you must keep your sneakers on in case you want to run away during the act, then every misstep of mine was worthwhile. I’m already predicting my future shame at thinking I had anything to offer you, but also my future glory in having stopped you from trying an expensive juice cleanse or thinking that it was your fault when the person you are dating suddenly backs away, intimidated by the clarity of your personal mission here on earth. No, I am not a sexpert, a psychologist, or a dietician. I am not a mother of three or the owner of a successful hosiery franchise. But I am a girl with a keen interest in having it all, and what follows are hopeful dispatches from the frontlines of that struggle.’
25 days, people. 25 days.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.