Lance Rubin, a comedian and author, provides a fresh take on angsty teen identity-seeking with a side of gut-wrenching family trauma in Crying Laughing.
The most important rule of improv, as 15-year-old Winnie Friedman learns in the first meeting of her school's improv troupe, is "Yes and." In other words, players accept everything their scene partners do, then add something to the scene to move it forward. She soon also learns that although supporting your partner (no matter what) outside of improv seems like a good idea, sometimes real life is more complicated. When Winnie's father, a former comedian, is diagnosed with ALS, she willingly goes along with his efforts to use humor to lighten the family's pain. But perhaps her seemingly humorless mother is right: what they're really doing is not taking the situation seriously. As Winnie struggles to succeed in improv and show people outside her immediate circle that she is talented, dynamics are shifting with her best friends, identical twins Leili and Asmaa, and a new relationship with school funny boy, Evan, is confusing and frustrating. Winnie badly wants to out herself as the hilarious person she knows she is, but anxiety keeps knocking her down.
Rubin's (Denton Little's Deathdate) restraint is admirable; where a lesser writer might give Winnie a rousing success in her big performance, Rubin takes the path less triumphant. Winnie truly is funny, so her awkward failures onstage as she tries too hard, worries about her dad, wonders about her insecure boyfriend and stresses that she will bomb as much as she did during her bat mitzvah performance are excruciating and so sympathetic. Her courage and hard-earned self-reflection will have readers cheering, crying and, yes, laughing. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor