Reviews
"From the moment I started this book, I couldn't put it down. Melissa Broder GETS IT. This book takes the side effects of mental illness and makes them funny. Anyone who is battling with depression, anxiety, existential dread/crises, or just anyone who has a brain, should read this book."-- Bethany Cosentino, Best Coast, "Broder may be talking about things like sexts, Botox, and crushes, but these things are considered alongside contemplations about mortality, identity, and the difficulty of finding substance in a world where sometimes it's so much easier to exist behind a screen."-- The Fader, "Instead of supersizing her angsty tweets, Broder presents a dizzying array of intimate dispatches and confessions...She has a near-supernatural ability to not only lay bare her darkest secrets, but to festoon those secrets with jokes, subterfuge, deep shame, bravado, and poetic turns of phrase."-- New York Magazine, "Broder's insight and honesty will make your brain light up and your hair stand on end." "The San Francisco Examiner"", "Broder writes with the kind of honesty that can make you cringe and laugh, and then catch your breath, brought up short by a kind of existential dread."-- Salon.com, "SO SAD TODAY is a desperately honest collection of essays, the kind that make you cringe as you eagerly, shamelessly consume them. Melissa Broder lays herself bare but she does so with strength, savvy, and style. Above all, these essays are sad and uncomfortable and their own kind of gorgeous. They reveal so much about what it is to live in this world, right now."-- Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist, "An utterly bewitching book and... a thrillingly tangible account of what it is to be a human being, right here, right now. I loved it. So many staggering-and difficult-observations. So many beautiful turns of phrase. There aren't many writers who can stare into the abyss and report back with humour, panache, and a rich, gutsy spirit. Melissa Broder can. It's a book I'm going to read again, and talk about, and pass on."-- Emma Jane, author of Animals, " Meat Hear t...is unbelievable and overwhelming for its imaginative power alone, but if you listen past the weird you can hear all sorts of things: sadness, seriousness, life, death, and a whole lot of laughter....Broder is a tremendous talent."-- Flavorwire, "Broder's essays often left me with a sharp sense of feminine recognition. I would read her accounts of heartbreak, sexual dissatisfaction, and alienation and think, Same..."-- NewYorker.com, "Irreverent, ballsy, impossible to put down. With courage and humor, Broder shows us that the underbelly of self-awareness is the existential sads."-- Courtney Maum, author of I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, "Vividly rendered and outspokenly delivered essays...Sordid, compulsively readable entries that lay bare a troubled soul painstakingly on the mend."-- Kirkus Reviews, "If symptoms could write, they would sound a lot like Melissa Broder's SO SAD TODAY. Broder's angst is existential and pathological and filled with as many holes as there are things to fill it with...An insight into the perverse persistence of hope and humanity, even in the age of clickbait and online individualism."-- Dr. Nina Power, author of One-Dimensional Woman, "What a decadent, hilarious, important, devastating book this is. SO SAD TODAY will explode on impact in your mind."-- Jami Attenberg, New York Times bestselling author of The Middlesteins and Saint Mazie, "With a title recalling Yeats...Broder risks the divine in her second book...shrewd, funny, twisted, sad poems..." ""The Chicago Tribune""", "What a decadent, hilarious, important, devastating book this is. SO SAD TODAY will explode on impact in your mind." ""New York Times" bestselling author of "The Middlesteins" and "Saint Mazie""", "Broder employs precise and provoking language to entice readers with essays that explore the all-consuming nature of technology, romance and relationships in the modern world...offer(ing) others who may be suffering a beacon of hope that each of us is not alone. More than a collection of essays, this memoir of sorts documents anxiety, hurt, and understanding with humor and heart."-- Library Journal, "Out to 'crucify boredom, ' her poems show us how any relationship with the divine is no less at risk of engendering grotesque lust...What makes Broder such a pleasure on the page is her insistence that these dramas play out on a workaday stage infused with surreal Pop and imaginative muscle..." "Publishers Weekly"", "Melissa Broder is undoubtedly one of the best essay stylists at work today...Broder's writing is funny and sober, her honesty uncomfortable and comforting, and reading her book is just like getting a text from your best friend...It's easy enough to say that So Sad Today is brutally honest, but there's a real kindness to Broder's honesty, too, the intimacy with which it beckons a reader's shy and tender heart. In Broder's company, we can dare to tremble at our own depths."-- Ploughshares, ACCLAIM FOR MELISSA BRODER: "Lushly dark and infused with references to black magic, Broder's work often feels less like a book and more like a mystical text." "PAPERMAG"", "Broder's book is a reminder of how humor can spring organically from darkness--not as a result of sadness but in spite of it--and Broder is unusually gifted at harnessing its defensive power."-- Slate.com, "If Melissa Broder weren't so fucking funny I would have wept through this entire book. Love, sex, addiction, mental illness and childhood trauma all join hands and dance in a circle, to the tune of Melissa's unmatched wit and dementedly perfect take on this terrifying orb we call home."-- LennyLetter.com, "If her Twitter account is a darkly comic 'creative way to distract myself and cope,' as [Melissa Broder] describes it, then her essays are deeper excavations of that same mind."-- Elle, "I don't know what a book is if not a latch to elsewhere, and Scarecrone has pressed its skull against the hidden door. It is neither drunk nor ecstatic to be here-it is a state unto itself." "VICE"", "At once devastating and delightful, this deeply personal collection of essays (named for Broder's popular Twitter handle) is as raw as it is funny."-- Cosmopolitan, "What a decadent, hilarious, important, devastating book this is. SO SAD TODAY will explode on impact in your mind."-- New York Times bestselling author of The Middlesteins and Saint Mazie, "This debut from Broder is as funny and hip as it is disturbing... a bright and unusual debut." "Publishers Weekly"", "With irreverence and wit, Melissa Broder confronts the most hidden and grotesque parts of herself...Reading her, it seems that we're all fucked-up, but it's because of this that we connect with each other, fall in love, find contentment, and maybe even a little happiness."-- Sarah Gerard, author of Binary Star, "Meat Heart...is unbelievable and overwhelming for its imaginative power alone, but if you listen past the weird you can hear all sorts of things: sadness, seriousness, life, death, and a whole lot of laughter....Broder is a tremendous talent." "Flavorwire"", "It would have been easy for Broder to stay anonymous and simply publish a book of @SoSadToday's most popular tweets, but instead, she chose to challenge herself in what turned out to be a triumph of unsettlingly relatable prose."-- VanityFair.com, "Delightful...Broder embarks on an earnest, sophisticated inquiry into the roots and expressions of her own sadness...deeply confessional writing brings disarming humor and self-scrutiny...Broder's central insight is clear: it is ok to be sad, and our problems can't be reduced to a single diagnosis."-- Publishers Weekly, "Her poignant (and at times profane) writing remains a wonderful antidote to a constant stream of other people's touted successes, delivered with generosity and without any judgment. This book is full of dirty secrets, all of which are transformed into something healing when they reach the light of day...The resulting collection is both gross and gorgeous, infused with explicit sexuality (content warning) and visceral ugliness, and often offers a perfect union of the two."-- The Globe and Mail, "Naysayers may dismiss Broder's Tweets "cute," but she gets it in a way they never will. That much is clear in her prose, and never has her prose been so bold, so naked and fearless."-- Examiner.com, "Under her beloved Twitter persona So Sad Today, Broder is probably the Internet's most powerful merchant of feelings."-- GQ.com, "The essays are personal and riveting...there is profound comfort to be found in being offered a glimpse into another person's struggles with anxiety and sadness."-- Largehearted Boy, "Her writing is deeply personal, sophisticated in its wit, and at the same time, devastating. SO SAD TODAY is a portrait of modern day existence told with provocative, irreverent honesty." -- Nylon, "Broder writes about the hot-pink toxins inhaled every day by girls and women...and the seemingly impossible struggle to exhale something pure, maybe even eternal...there's a bleak beauty in the way she articulates her lowest moments."-- Bookforum