BOOKS: Fey Accompli

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NEW YORK TIMES: “Bossypants” isn’t a memoir. It’s a spiky blend of humor, introspection, critical thinking and Nora Ephron-isms for a new generation. But it chronologically follows Ms. Fey through an awkward girlhood spent in Upper Darby, Pa., teenage years with a coterie of gay friends and a fish-out-of-water stint at the University of Virginia. “What 19-year-old Virginia boy doesn’t want a wide-hipped, sarcastic Greek girl with short hair that’s permed on top?” asks Ms. Fey, who calls herself Greek when she isn’t calling herself German. “What’s that you say? None of them want that? You are correct. So I spent four years attempting to charm the uninterested.” MORE

LOS ANGELES TIMES: If nothing else, “Bossypants” should make any profile of Fey unnecessary, since it provides, in abundance, everything readers want from a story about a performer and none of the “clever” observations about food intake/absence of makeup/appearance of child art upon which celebrity profiles are so dependent. In chapter after chapter, in a voice consistently recognizable as her own, Fey simply tells stories of her life: How a nerdy but self-confident half-Greek girl entered theatrical life (a wonderful community theater, lots of gay and lesbian friends), what Second City was like “back in the day” (cultish, hard, unbelievably fun), how “Saturday Night Live” works (a chemical compound of Harvard grads and Improv people), what it’s like to be a woman in comedy (harder than you think but not as hard as coal mining) or to run your own show or to satirize a vice presidential candidate when she’s standing right backstage. MORE

RELATED:  She has been eerily morphed for the book’s cover into a freakish hybrid of pretty woman and big, strong, hairy-armed man. “I hope that’s not really the cover,” reads another of the book’s blurbs, from Don Fey, her father. “That’s really going to hurt sales.” MORE

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