If there's anything a woman loves when she's feeling frustrated, slighted, underestimated, or otherwise bitchy, it's commiseration. When I have my days, there's nothing I love better than to seethe with unadulterated odium and sometimes trash the people that have pissed me off, done me wrong or just flat out have it better than I do, and when I've got a good friend to do it with, it's a catharsis like no other. Fellow bitches who relate to this need look no further than "It's Hard Not To Hate You", the second memoir by humorist and erstwhile chick-lit author Valerie Frankel ("Thin Is The New Happy"). Should you choose to get hold of this book for the purpose of engaging in some good ol' fashion unapologetic hatin', take your finger and cover up the last two letters of the author's surname before you crack the cover. See that? That word doesn't take root in her name by accident - you'll get nothing less than utter candor from her in this treatise on why it's a bad thing to bottle up your frustrations and your hatred, and how it can be liberating and surprisingly healthy to let it fly more often. Of course, Frankel is taking liberty with what her doctor advised her to do ("I'd also strongly urge you to find a way to reduce stress") after a frightful cancer diagnosis; the author strives like hell within the year to achieve her own Zen in the face of jealousy, impatience and intolerance by whatever means necessary, including at one point an impromptu visit to a Zen center. As a result, her book is extremely entertaining to the very last sentence, her rampant sarcasm and dry wit coupled with some inventive lingo ("freudeschaden", "pulling a Williamsburg") making for several laugh-out-loud moments.
Frankel kicks things off by revealing the birth of her repressed hatred in an adolescence hampered by her struggles with her weight and her inability to maintain healthy friendships, the repression reaching its peak once she was told she had carcinoma in situ after a colonoscopy (hence the free-flowing hate thereafter). She then segues into her adulthood, grumbling about a neighbor who repeatedly snubs her for no reason (a woman she dubs BBoA for "Biggest Bitch of All") and the way in which she exacts revenge for said snubs one day, along with reviewing her relationships with two ex-boyfriends and realizing in hindsight how wrong they were for her ("How to Love the Man You Hate").
She also encourages people to give envy permission to turn them a little green, using comedienne Joan River's logic that openly admitting jealousy "keeps it from taking over. Pretending it's not makes it more powerful. Nothing to feel guilty or ashamed of. It's a motivator. Anything that spurs you on is good."
Even so, Frankel reviles the fickleness of the publishing industry and her lack of success in it over the years, saying, "My problem was schadenfreude in reverse. I took misery in another person's joy. Call it freudeschaden. The rich, the thin, the beautiful - I had no beef with them. If the world's wealthiest, most slender and gorgeous woman walked into my office this minute and asked for a cup of coffee, I'd give it to her. But if this woman said, "My first novel has just hit the New York Times bestseller list"? Hate. She could go get a cup of coffee in hell."
And did you know it's okay to hate your husband/boyfriend? Frankel explains in her chapter "How to Hate the Man You Love" that "if you were to pick apart any boyfriend or husband, you could find flaws aplenty and excellent reasons to hate him - and you should! In a marriage, some anger is good. In fact, wives' lives depend on it. A well-reported psych study a few years back found that self-silencing wives who didn't express their anger and annoyance to their husbands were four times more likely to die in a ten-year period than their bitching, nagging, complaining counterparts. Not hating your husband could kill you."
"Why I Have No Friends, Part II" revisits Frankel's troubles with maintaining relationships, this time discussing the harsh realities that often cause them to disintegrate (relationships/marriage, children, etc.). "Why Pot Should Be Legal" is an editorial on just plain bitching about the annoying stuff people do along with inconvenient situations and finding ways to let them go and/or go with the flow. "The Enemies List" is an interesting piece on black magic and superstition, Frankel writing down the names of people she has a beef with on a piece of paper and hoping something bad happens to them by ritualistically placing them in a drawer. "I Hate Your Kids" is a chapter many parents will relate to that complains about how other parents mismanage their kids and/or choose disastrous parenting techniques that breed obnoxious, entitled children, while "Can't Complain" has the author and her family failing miserably at an experiment created by Reverend Will Bowen, the four of them endeavoring not to complain about anything and only making it five days before they tore the symbolic rubber bracelets from their wrist in utter capitulation to their mutual proclivity to piss and moan. Frankel says, "I give props to anyone who can be complaint free. But I am not one of those people. I've grown happily accustomed to expressing - with my own choice of words - the good, bad, and fugly. Bowen would probably say I quit too soon. I would counter, I went far too long. Not for just the last several days, but for most of my life."
Bottom line: "It's Hard Not To Hate You" is short (239 pages), sweet (refreshing, not syrupy), wry, and a riot for anyone looking to loosen the knot of umbrage and envy that lodges in their gut from time to time with hearty doses of candor and humor. The hate in you must come out, folks - it's a matter of mirth or misery.
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