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False Hope

Rejection - it's a part of life.

Often painful, sometimes life-affirming, it is something that everyone has experienced at one time or another.

Laura Kightlinger has chosen to take those rejections and make a morbid and terribly funny book out of them.

Kightlinger, a comedienne who has appeared on "Saturday Night Live," has also performed on two HBO specials and has written for such shows as "Roseanne" and "Will and Grace."

In her book, "Quick Shots of False Hope: a rejection collection," she gives an autobiographical account of the personal rejection and terrible tragedies that have occurred in her life - from her adolescent years to the present.

The book starts off with Kightlinger's years in junior high school, where a failed attempt to become "funktastic" by dancing to the song "Car Wash" only leads to her further unpopularity.

From there, Kightlinger moves onward through high school, careening towards college and the infancy of her stand up career - finishing with her present position as a successful writer and comedienne.

Along this journey, Kightlinger touches on subjects such as failed auditions, lost love, cancer, suicides and deaths in the family.

Kightlinger manages to make such somber subjects darkly funny - while at the same time being deeply human.

Take, for example, the following passage about her view of a visit with relatives:

"My family celebrated its collective low self-esteem by being grotesquely early for everything. If we had a family crest, it would feature a dragon torching its own ass with fire. Stitched underneath would be our motto: WE'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH."

Passages like these make the book one to pick up, carry with oneself throughout the house, put the book down, eat, pick the book up and read it until one is finished.

However, "Quick Shots of False Hope" is more than just a simple text written for the enjoyment of others. It comes across as Kightlinger's wailing cry from a wounded soul, with only a soothing wit to cure what ails her. Powerful stuff indeed for a book merely classified as "humor" by the Library of Congress.

As such, "Quick Shots of False Hope" is recommended for anyone with a sense of humor - and a sense of humanity.

It should be noted, though, that those a little on the dark side, delightfully unpopular and look at themselves in the mirror and whisper "I suck," will find this book to be a refreshing splash of water in the hangover of life.