Diablo Cody succinctly summed up the experience with a Sunday-evening tweet: “I read Bossypants way too fast. It should be a series, like The Baby-Sitters Club. You could get a new Bossypants at each school book fair.” Tina Fey’s slim, sharp new volume is aptly being compared to Nora Ephron (who, despite her diminishing screenwriting abilities, remains a star of the humour-memoir genre). It’s a vaguely chronological telling of Fey’s evolution from lifelong nerd—Liz Lemon minus fame—to the powerhouse she’s become. It touches briefly but not deeply upon the origins of her scar—“and why I’m not going to talk about it”—through her sexless college years, her job at the YMCA and well-known ascension at Saturday Night Live. It’s more life-mirrors-work than set diary—Amy Poehler is a favourite, but there are no tales from Baby Mama—because, like Ephron, Fey knows her audience will come back for more. Bossypants is a joyful, burn-through read, witty and worthy, like a 30 Rock marathon.
This article appears in Apr 14-20, 2011.