Review of the Day: Shrill by Lindy West

I have some knowledge of West’s work from watching the television adaptation of Shrill and from hearing her on This American Life once or twice.Shrill is an essay collection that manages to take on serious topics like body shaming, abortion, and internet trolls yet still be quite funny, at least in my opinion. If you have not encountered West before, be aware that the word fat appears. Often.

For example:

At the same time that I was tentatively opening to the idea that my humanity was not hostage to my BMI, the rest of the nation had declared a “war on obesity.” They’d whipped up a host of reasons why it was right and good to hate fat people: our repulsive, unsexy bodies, of course (the classic!), but also our drain on the healthcare system, our hogging of plane armrests, our impact on “the children,” our pathetic inability and/or monstrous refusal to swap austerity for gluttony (like thin people, who, as you know, are moderate and virtuous in all ways). Oh, and our “health.” Because they care. They abuse us for our own good. (Do you know what is actually not a good way to help a group of people, it turns out? Advocating for their eradication) (p. 88).

My favorite essay in the book was “Slaying the Troll” in which she actually meets a man who used to harass her online and wrote to her to apologize. As she says,

This e-mail still unhinges my jaw every time I read it. A troll apologizing—this had never happened to me before, it has never happened to me since, I do not know anyone to which it has happened, nor have I heard of such a thing in the wide world of Internet lore. I have read interviews with scholars who study trolling from an academic perspective, specifically stating that the one thing you never get from a troll is public remorse (p. 245).

This is an essay collection worth your time.

One note. I got my ebook through the kindle unlimited program. Despite the fact that I have a PhD in English and the fact that I have been a serious kindle user since 2010, I find kindle unlimited baffling.

kindle and Audible audiobook. 264 pgs. 23 March 2026