FAMESICK

Getting behind the scenes.

When, in the last pages of her forthright and affecting memoir, Dunham meets her husband (she married Luis Felber in 2021), she quickly informs him of what she considers the two essential facts of her existence: “I was sick, and people did not like me.” The reader of Dunham’s fascinating (and at times dishy) account of her personal, public, and artistic life will, like him, not be tempted to argue these points. But even if the reader starts off as a member of those disapproving masses—the writer, actor, and director surely means both people in her immediate circle and people in general—it’s well worth getting her take on both the high points and the sadly numerous low ones of her life so far. The former include the mostly thrilling story of how Tiny Furniture, a near–home movie made when she was “freshly twenty,” kicked off the groundbreaking, award-winning six-season success of the HBO series Girls; the early years of her love affair with singer-songwriter and music producer Jack Antonoff; and her fiercely close though sometimes-fraught relationship with her artist parents. Her health problems were compounded by the attitude of those around her who said she was imagining it all. There were physical collapses, hospitalizations, and surgeries, including a hysterectomy—it would be more surprising if she hadn’t ended up with a prescription drug addiction than that she did. It’s also poignant to see the complexities of her own personality interact with the corrosive effects of fame to destroy many of her closest personal and working relationships. “Getting sick,” Dunham writes, “is not all that different than getting more famous. It has a maddening circularity, and it’s also very hard to explain, even to the people closest to you.” In this book, she explains it very well.

A moving and candid look at an overexposed and misunderstood life.