If I Don’t Laugh, I’ll Cry: How Death, Debt, and Comedy Led to a Life of Faith, Farming, and Forgetting What I Came into This Room For

In this high-spirited debut memoir, Still Being Molly blogger Stillman traces her rocky path from grief to faith and the trials she faced on the way. As a child, Stillman loved to make people laugh and dreamed of Saturday Night Live fame. Life began to unravel after her mother’s 2002 death from a possible autoimmune disease, however, and when the 21-year-old author received a quarter-million-dollar inheritance from an estranged grandmother in 2006, she quickly began burning through it (“When I missed my mom, I spent money. When my boyfriend and I argued, I spent money”). She moved to New York City after college graduation to pursue a comedy career, and here describes dizzying days spent at comedy shows, “meeting random guys at bars,” and generally “chasing after worldly idols like fame, fortune, men, and status” before facing up to her credit card debt of more than $36,000, a “rock bottom” moment that led her to a deep faith. While the two sometimes mesh awkwardly, Stillman’s spiritual insights are affecting and her candid humor entertains, as when she recalls “being talked off the edge by a [bank] customer service representative” helping her survey her debt (“I can only assume our call was being recorded for quality assurance purpose. Whoever reviewed [it] was in for a real doozy”). Readers will be won over by Stillman’s no-holds-barred account of finding God and herself. (Mar.)