First published 2016
Norm Macdonald despised celebrity memoirs. He called them one step below instruction manuals when publishers approached him to write one. Instead of delivering what they wanted, he disappeared to a farm in northern Canada for two years, abandoning his stand-up career entirely. The isolation changed him. When he returned, he carried a manuscript that defied every expectation. This wasn't a typical celebrity tell-all filled with backstage gossip and career highlights. Macdonald had created something else entirely, a book that mixed comedy with tragedy, love with loss, war with redemption. He refused to categorize it when pressed by confused publishers. The result challenges readers to decide what they're actually reading. Is it memoir? Is it fiction? Macdonald doesn't care what you call it, and that indifference becomes the book's greatest strength. His voice cuts through literary pretension with the same deadpan precision that made his comedy legendary.
Genres: literary-fiction, autobiography, memoir, biography-memoir, comedy, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Canada
Period: 21st-century
256 pages · Hardcover · Random House