Furiously Happy

The book opens with a warning: the author strongly advises the reader not to read it, then compares the book to “severed heads in the closet” — the oddities everyone hides, the unspoken confessions, the suppressed fears. This opening sets the tone: heavy subjects are told behind absurd and sometimes crude jokes. The author adds straight away that this is not a textbook but one person's experience: “My mental illness is not your mental illness.”

The Author's Note is the most serious and most valuable part of the book. Lawson explains how the #FuriouslyHappy movement began: the decision to live the good days between depressive episodes “furiously” — up to and including renting kangaroos. The author compares recovering from mental illness to a soldier returning from war: you come back to work weaker and paler, yet nobody knows about the hidden war you fought. From this comes the central wish: a world where personal battles for mental health are met with pride rather than shame. The note ends with the line “I haven't self-harmed in three days” — one of the simplest and most powerful moments in the book.

The first essay is built on a years-long argument with a mother who insists, “You're not crazy, you're just sensitive.” Lawson lists the diagnoses: severe anxiety disorder, clinical depression, self-harm linked to impulse control disorder, avoidant personality disorder, depersonalisation, obsessive-compulsive disorder and trichotillomania (hair-pulling). The heavy list is immediately softened by a joke: say the word “mania” on a crowded plane and people will move away and give you room to breathe.

At the heart of the essay is “white coat syndrome”: fainting at the sight of a doctor's coat since childhood. Lawson describes passing out on a school trip to a hospital, at the optometrist, the dentist, the gynaecologist and even the vet — waking up half-dressed in a lobby full of dogs after the last one. These stories are genuinely funny, but there is a serious idea behind them: body and brain sometimes work against us, and talking about it is healthier than hiding it. In the end the mother concedes: “Maybe you're not normal, but who wants to be normal?”

The essay's most important idea comes at the end: being furiously happy is not a cure for mental illness but a weapon against it — a way to take back at least part of the joy that the illness steals. Lawson describes trying to “fix” the anxiety as a child by hiding in empty toy boxes, as a teenager by isolating, at university through an eating disorder, and now managing it with medication, therapy and honesty. That honesty is the book's greatest value.

The essays that follow are uneven. Chapters like the late-night phone notes are strings of absurd thoughts — peaches feel like eating newborn baby heads, asparagus is an artichoke that didn't grow up properly — and may tire some readers. Sexual jokes and swearing are plentiful. The Turkish translation is lively, but the English wordplay (such as “cumin” versus “human”) has to be explained in footnotes and some jokes are lost. The book saves its strongest pages for the end.

• The ability to talk about heavy subjects through absurd humour
• Rare openness about mental illness
• An empowering voice addressing the reader directly in the final essays