I picked up Solutions and Other Problems because I needed a laugh, and I loved Allie Brosh’s last book, Hyperbole and a Half. I ended up loving Solutions and Other Problems, which has the manic energy and hilarious awkwardness of Hyperbole and a Half, but with a lot of poignancy. If Hyperbole and Half does a brilliant job of capturing and depicting depression in a hilarious, but haunting way, Solutions and Other Problems does something similar for grief.
Sometime after her first book was published, Brosh’s sister died in a car accident which was potentially suicide. The loss of her sister, and her own traumatic health problems, shadow this book. Yet the book is also a brilliant tribute to the complicate love between siblings and the way that sometimes the people we’re closest too can be unknowable and mysterious. I loved and still love Brosh’s depictions of the fundamental weirdness of children, because as a parent and a teacher, I feel like this is not discussed enough. Kids are weird, man. They can be obsessed with the strangest things, and most of the time we just kind of accept that they have too put a line of robots along their bed before they fall asleep. For some mysterious reason.
Still, while this books examines sad and difficult problems and grief, it’s also laugh-out-loud funny. I seriously laughed so hard reading it I was afraid I’d wake up everyone in the house. I started reading it during Texas’s Snowmageddan 2021, and it kept me sane and laughing during some pretty crazy stuff. I was recently re-reading it, and it’s so funny and touching I could see this being a book I’d re-read over and over again.
I’d recommend it to anyone who needs a good laugh, or even a good cry. Or maybe both.
Cover of Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh