Not everyone is going to love Sandra Tsing Loh’s specific brand of neurotic humor, and that’s okay. If you like David Sedaris’ work, well…she’s something like that. Just imagine a divorced west coast female David Sedaris with two teenage daughters, a partner who has converted to Hinduism, a house and yard that need work, and a bad case of what I can only diagnose as status anxiety.

Personally, I rather like Loh’s observational humor, her fast-paced and strange inner monologue, her honesty, and her self-aware complaining. (I can put up with a lot of complaining if the complainer is funny. And this complainer certainly is.) Whether she’s putting together a funeral, navigating her daughter’s college application process, dealing with a catastrophically expensive surprise tax bill, or going to overdue medical appointments, her descriptions of the absurdities and indignities of modern life consistently make me laugh.

The good news, if you find this sort of thing to your liking, is that The Madwoman and the Roomba is the latest in a series of similar books by Loh. I’m rather hoping that in a year or two we’ll be treated to her take on the pandemic. (The Socially Distanced Madwoman? The Madwoman in a Mask?  Zooming with the Madwoman? The mind reels with the possibilities…)

If you can relate to Sandra Tsing Loh in middle age, which she claims feels more like living “a disorganized 25-year-old’s life in an 85-year-old’s malfunctioning body,” you’ll laugh throughout, and you’ll cry at the end when her sister manages to transform the idea of their eccentric, often angry, inconsiderate father into “a stirring, inspirational, full-throated exhortation for us all to seize the world.”

Get yourself a copy, and if it turns out that this particular humor is not for you, give it to your favorite slightly maladjusted friend.

HOW TO PURCHASE: AMAZON

BOOK: The Madwoman and the Roomba–My Year of Domestic Mayhem

AUTHOR: Sandra Tsing Loh

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2020

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Book cover, W.W. Norton & Co.