Gotham Girl Interrupted

My Misadventures in Motherhood, Love, and Epilepsy

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Pub Date 06 Nov 2018 | Archive Date 01 Nov 2018

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Description

Nora Ephron and Allie Brosh fans take note: Alisa Jones' memoir Gotham Girl Interrupted is a smart stand-up comedy about the power of falling down.

"Get to your safe spaces, people. Here comes the shimmer..."

From irreverent NYC blogger Alisa Kennedy Jones comes an account of her "misadventures in motherhood, love, and epilepsy" that James Patterson calls "smart, harrowing, heart-warming, and very funny."

What do Da Vinci, Agatha Christie, and blogger Alisa Kennedy Jones have in common? If you said "timeless artistic genius", stop sucking up--the answer is ecstatic epilepsy. In this hilarious and moving dispatch from the frontlines of neurodiversity, Jones chronicles life with these terrifying-yet-beautiful grand mal seizures. Characteristic of Jones's condition are attacks which leave her with what Zen Buddhists sometimes refer to as a "beginner's mind": a vast, open expanse of headspace, coupled with a creative euphoria.

With bracing candor and humility, Jones describes living with chronic illness, single motherhood, and her day-to-day life as a hapless writer in NYC. Above all, Jones reminds us to fight the battle for becoming who we are supposed to be--no matter how much flopping around on the ground and wetting ourselves we have to do to get there.
Nora Ephron and Allie Brosh fans take note: Alisa Jones' memoir Gotham Girl Interrupted is a smart stand-up comedy about the power of falling down.

"Get to your safe spaces, people. Here comes the...

Advance Praise

"Smart, harrowing, heart-warming, and very funny, Alisa Jones has created a book that should be read by anyone who doesn't mind a few tears, and moments of stinging human insight, mixed in with their belly-laughs."

--James Patterson

"Smart, harrowing, heart-warming, and very funny, Alisa Jones has created a book that should be read by anyone who doesn't mind a few tears, and moments of stinging human insight, mixed in with their...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781623545284
PRICE $15.99 (USD)
PAGES 192

Average rating from 7 members


Featured Reviews

Funny and spirited, this book gives a look at something most people don't talk about. Great book.
Thanks to author,publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free,it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

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My interest in epilepsy began in grade school when I saw a girl sitting a couple of benches ahead of me having a grand mal seizure. When Net Galley offered the advance reading copy of Gotham Girl Interrupted with the promise of both brash truths and laugh-out-loud moments about the disease and culture, I asked for a copy.

Alisa Kennedy Jones writes a memoir of her experience of being diagnosed at age forty with epilepsy, calling the disease an overabundance of electricity in the brain. She lays out important things to know before beginning her story. There are more than forty forms of the disease, it affects more than sixty-five million people in the world, and it can strike at any age.

Central to her narrative is a childhood story about touching an electric fence. She will use that metaphor throughout to help the reader understand how the disease behaves. I found her description of what happens in a seizure to be the clearest I have ever read or heard and was particularly surprised to know that immediately prior to the seizure is an aura with a pleasant feel.

Humorous personal touches make the book interesting. When people made insensitive remarks to her, she got revenge by sending a donation in their name to the Epilepsy Foundation. Or she might say she got a letter from her brain yesterday, “The penmanship was atrocious. She must have been drinking.”

To say I enjoyed the book seems strange, but I was never without a feeling of satisfaction either that I was learning how to empathize rather than sympathize with someone who had the disease or actually laughing with the author as she applied her sense of humor that must have eased her difficulties.

I recommend the book for anyone who wants to understand the peculiarities of epilepsy and for anyone who likes a true story of someone who faces challenge with a sense of humor.

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The premise of the book is great and the author really delivers. Great read. Highly recommended. .

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