Fully Baked: A Messy Memoir

Comedian Baker debuts with a bittersweet account of her dysfunctional upbringing, sobriety, comedy career, and experiences of marriage and motherhood. A solid chunk of the memoir turns on Baker’s drunken 20s in 2000s New York City, which helped give rise to her comedic voice. She parallels childhood memories of her mother’s alcoholism with her own struggles to get sober: “Leaving behind the bulletproof confidence of my drunken identity, of the girl who could walk into any room and situation certain she could handle it,” Baker writes, “was the scariest thing I’d ever done.” A professional breakthrough came in 2018, after Amy Schumer DM’ed Baker on Twitter and asked her to open for her (“Having one of your comedy gods pick you out of obscurity... is the kind of shit I thought only happened in movies that rushed the plot”). Throughout, Baker is bold, funny, and self-incriminating, keenly aware of the racial and class privileges—her grandfather was George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state—that afforded her second chances many addicts never receive, though a few attempts to mine her entitlement for laughs fall flat. She saves the day with genuine gratitude for her success and the stabilizing forces of her husband and daughter. Readers will be charmed. Agent: Anthony Mattero, CAA. (June)