It’s the summer of memoirs, and I’m here for it. The latest is Famesick by Lena Dunham.
This book is an irresistible listen/read. It’s part voyeuristic (like watching a car crash) and part mesmerizing (like watching an artist at work). In her second memoir (the first, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned,” was published in 2014), Dunham takes us back to her childhood and offers a thorough analysis of how she became the controversial artist she is today. She brings us along for her swift success and then her spiral into a very dark place. Where we end up is a clearer understanding of her art, her voice, and her hard-won self-acceptance.
Unlike many celebrity books, there’s no ghostwriter, and that matters. There’s no filter on Dunham’s work. I adore the pace and the honesty with which she writes about both her successes and her failures.
What I love about Dunham is that she put it all out there—her good qualities, her mistakes, and her messes. Normally, we don’t let women get away with this. We want them tidy and neat, fitting inside a perfectly shaped box. While many people want less Dunham, I want more.
“If you make yourself out to be a bottomless resource, people will frack.”
She’s a canny observer, and that’s what makes this book work.
When Dunham compares her nervous system to that of a bunny, it makes perfect sense. Especially when you rewatch her acting in Girls and see her skin prickle, her eyes dart, and her body try to make itself small when necessary. Her performance may not be traditionally polished, but it is elemental in nature.
The book deals with her career as a multi-hyphenate in Hollywood, but mostly it talks about her health. And to put it bluntly, she’s a hot mess. On top of having numerous health issues, she feels things more deeply than the rest of us. I resisted the urge to say that some of her illnesses must be psychological in nature because I know that psychological pain is real pain.
She covers the early success of Tiny Furniture (2010) and then brings us along as her world flips upside down. She was just 24 when she got to run her own show, Girls—impossible! What a risk HBO took on her, and wow, how it paid off. The show became both a critical and commercial success. I had no idea that behind the scenes she was struggling so profoundly.
With her star rising, her body starts breaking down. The book is a reckoning of sorts. Was it worth the tradeoff?
As I started the book, I began rewatching Girls, and it holds up. The fashions may look dated, but the struggling artists remain timeless. During this rewatch, though, I found myself sad for Dunham. I watched her body change with each season, adding weight and losing some of the spring in her step that characterized the early episodes. We’re seeing her grow up and get sick at the same time.
Dunham just turned 40, but she’s not much wiser when it comes to oversharing or being naked. Now, instead of full-frontal sex scenes, we get the stripped-down honesty of where she is in life and how she navigates the world as a chronically ill person.
“The chaos wasn’t happening to me … I was the chaos.”
Do I want to be her best friend? Absolutely not. Way too much work. But I want women like her to exist. We need more sensitive observers in the world, not fewer.
This book should be listened to as well as read because hearing Dunham’s voice adds another dimension. The moments of pain and joy are perfectly emphasized through her narration. Her early days as a college student and filmmaker were my favorite sections—that combination of hopefulness and cluelessness is a joy to witness.
Thank you, Ms. Dunham, for being the brave artist that you are. I hope to see, read, and experience more of your gifts in the future. I also hope that young artists—and the people who love them—pick up this book. It reminds us what it means to be deeply sensitive in a world where thick skin often seems like a necessity.
Final Thoughts
Raw, funny, chaotic, and surprisingly moving, Famesick is less about fame than it is about what happens when a highly sensitive artist is thrust into the spotlight before she’s ready. Dunham writes with the same honesty that made Girls so compelling, but with the perspective of someone who has survived the fallout. Get Famesick on Amazon here.
One-line takeaway: Famesick is a fascinating portrait of a woman learning that her greatest gift—feeling everything deeply—can also be her greatest challenge.
For fans of: Girls, Not That Kind of Girl, Jenny Mollen, Cat Marnell, celebrity memoirs, stories of creative ambition, and readers interested in the complicated intersection of fame, illness, and identity.
Where I read it: On long country walks with the audiobook in my ears, while simultaneously rewatching Girls and seeing Lena Dunham’s story through an entirely new lens.
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