I had passed the window of the Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn at least eight or nine times on my early morning runs before I finally stopped in one day after work. On each of those mornings, for a split second as I sped by, I would glimpse the cover of Tina Fey’s new book, Bossypants. I was never quite sure I was seeing it clearly until the day I finally took a copy down from the bookstore shelf, just as another customer glanced down at it in my hands on her way to the register and laughed uncomfortably. That, in fact, might be a good way to introduce a review of this book: It will, in all likelihood, make most of you laugh, maybe a little bit uncomfortably at times, while at least a few of you will find yourselves somewhat confused by her humor. Dad, if you’re reading this, I’m looking at you.

Credit: Wikipedia

To those readers hoping to find a confessional account of an author’s closely-guarded secrets, family dramas, and personal struggles, I might recommend that you buy Bossypants to use as a coaster for your drink while you delve into works by Joan Didion, Vladimir Nabokov, and maybe Barbara Walters. For those of you interested in lighter stories told with humor of the sort that seems always, enviably, to flow freely from Tina Fey’s pen, you will truly love this book. Bossypants is self-deprecating and smart: while the anecdotes are selected for their entertainment value, the author also assumes an intelligent readership. Bossypants showcases Tina Fey doing what Tina Fey does best. The work may not be a comprehensive portrait of the life of an actress whose resume boasts such positions as head writer of Saturday Night Live and creator of the television series 30 Rock (though these experiences both happen to feature prominently in the book). But that’s not the point: the way in which one chooses to tell his or her story is just as important as the stories themselves.

Some of the enjoyment I found myself getting from Bossypants derived from Fey’s ability to find the funny in experiences nearly all of us have gone through. Many readers will commiserate with the author during an account of her mother’s parental bewilderment when confronted with her daughter’s entrance into puberty. I read this chapter with hilarious recognition as Jeanne Fey passes along to her daughter a pamphlet entitled, “Growing Up and Liking It” before slipping out of the room. If memory serves, my “Growing Up and Liking It” equivalent had been the book, “What’s Happening to Me?” After perusing its pages of colorful illustrations, I recall waiting out the subsequent months in terror that I would sprout cartoon breasts the “completely normal” shape of traffic cones or overgrown summer squash. Fey, for her part, doesn’t recognize her first period when it comes since nowhere in “Growing Up and Liking It” does it ever say that your period is not a “blue liquid that you poured like laundry detergent onto a maxi pad,” like in the commercials.

Yet cute anecdotes do not a bestseller make, and were that this book’s most winning attribute, it wouldn’t be bringing much to the memoir table (an already cramped affair in which all the guests sit nervously wondering whether there will be enough dessert to go around). The game-changer here is that Bossypants is something smarter than just a funny romp through awkward adolescence, teenage heartbreak, show business, motherhood, and other experiences that test one’s patience. Fey, after all, has spent years as a writer for television and got her start as a comic at Chicago’s famed improvisation comedy club, Second City. She is equal parts writer and performer and this work is an amalgam of both. It reads as an off-the-cuff performance, but the writing is clean, the observations are astute, and the delivery is confident.

In one chapter, Fey tells the story of the summers she spent as one of the few straight participants in a local youth theater program mostly attended by gay teens. As such, she befriends a whole cast of colorful characters whose antics distract her from the watery bog of a recent teenage heartbreak. It is clearly one of the most enjoyable, memorable summers Fey has ever experienced, and yet as it all starts to wind down, as all summers must, she is surprised to be confronted with an uncomfortable realization about herself. This part of the book showcases Fey at her best: as a smart person who pauses just long enough to reflect on a key moment of her life before picking up right where she left off—with a well-timed joke about lesbians, squirrels, and nachos.

For much of the book, Fey is poking fun not only at the cultures she is a part of (America; show business; motherhood, etc.), but also at herself—for recognizing the absurd behavior around her without being above it. In the chapter, “All Girls Must Be Everything,” Fey draws attention to her straight Greek eyebrows: “They start at the hairline at my temple and, left unchecked, will grow straight across my face and onto yours.” The Tina Fey who mocks people who demand womanly perfection also unabashedly embraces Photoshop: “If you’re going to expend energy being mad about Photoshop, you’ll also have to be mad about earrings. No one’s ears are that sparkly! They shouldn’t have to be!” Needless to say, in Tina Fey’s world, no one escapes critique.

In the end, I think that Bossypants is a good book because it shares a certain ironic quality with other successful memoirs: it isn’t only about its author. The best memoirs are also about us—the readers—because most of us read memoirs with our own stories in mind. No matter that we’ve never been to the moon, or been married to a president, or started our own primetime television show. In other people’s stories, we find that we all share some version of the same kinds of imperfect human experiences. And though we’d like to think we wouldn’t change our eyebrows for the world, we’re in good company when we say that a little Photoshop work never hurt anyone.