Misery Loves Company

A French website solicits hard-luck stories, gets a deluge—and a book deal.
-By Rachel Kramer Bussel

F My Life
Edited by Maxime Valette, Guillaume Passaglia, and Didier Guedj
Villard

Next time you’re having a bad day, or month—or life—go pick up a copy of F My Life and take solace in its bite-size (or Tweet-size) tales of people who’ve had it much worse than you. The book packs hundreds of mishaps, misadven tures, and misbegotten tales, culled from the popular site FMyLife.com, into its 278 pages. The anecdotes are by turns embarrassing, cruel, hilarious, and mortifying—sometimes all at once. One girl opened her condom drawer to find each rubber packet strapped with a Jesus button and a note saying “Love, Mom.” One guy asked his boss for a raise and got, “Who the hell are you?” for a res ponse. They range from silly (cutting a finger slicing a pre-sliced bagel, drinking a cigarette-steeped beer) to scary-absurd (getting mugged by a man with a PEZ dispenser), to disturbing (a Chilean woman being told by her white mother-in-law, “This is why only white people should be allowed in America”).

“LOL” may be annoying Internet shorthand, but it definitely applies to this Internet-derived book: I laughed out loud many times while reading F My Life. Even the truly horrible moments—deaths, breakups, job losses—gain an element of humor and relief in the simple process of sharing with a commiserating community. While some entries miss the mark, and others are repetitious, F My Life is an entertaining pick-me-up for anyone who needs a smile. The illustrations enhance the mortification, which, if you’re lucky, you only experience vicariously—and if you’re not lucky, you can submit your story and share in the collective bad juju.