Review: Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me, by Chelsea Handler

Anyone who has read Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang or Are You There, Vodka... may be wondering what else there could possibly be to learn about this author/tv personality / potential alcoholic. Personally, I myself have felt on more than one occasion that I may know more about her vagina than I do about my own. Regardless, there is yet more to learn about the gregarious Ms. Handler: it seems that she is a compulsive liar who enjoys nothing more than mercilessly playing practical jokes on everyone she meets.

Chelsea's friends and family are more than happy to spill the beans on her craziness, in much the same way that all the characters from Seinfeld gathered on the last episode of the series to testify about the atrocities they dealt with at the hands of that show's main characters, in the new Lies that Chelsea Handler Told Me. The difference here is, all of the acts detailed in these pages, though just as outrageous, are true! Each chapter in the story is written by a different person, and details an event even more horrifying than the last. Ever had someone hijack your email and send notices to your entire family (as if they were you) confessing to them that you're only getting married because you're actually pregnant, or tell your boss that you're gay and looking for love? Do your friends convince your spouse to trick you into thinking he/she has become a compulsive gambler and owes a bookie $10k, and then get the bookie to go along with it? If you're a friend of Chelsea Handler, you may have experienced something like this, or worse. The more I read, the more appalled, and yet the more fascinated, I became. I was enthralled by the creativity involved in all of these stunts, and even more by Handler's ability to pull them off, time and time again, on people who are already on the lookout for this kind of behavior from her! She has to be some kind of evil genius.

One thing that becomes clear as you read the book is that, despite all of this insanity, every person who wrote a chapter adores Chelsea. While at first I wasn't clear *why*, since if one of my friends did these things to me, I might lose my mind, but after a few chapters, a trend began to emerge. Even as Handler is mucking around with the lives of everyone around her, she is also constantly inviting them into her home to stay for any amount of time, taking them with her on whirlwind adventures around the world, encouraging their own personal and professional success, and having a fabulous time doing it. At the end of each chapter, she adds her own brief comments about the authors' stories, and it is obvious that she cares about them as much as they do about her. The book is peppered with photos of a smiling Handler with her arms around whomever wrote the current chapter, on boats, tropical beaches, and poolsides, usually with drinks in hand.

The collection of personal testimonies from Handler's various victims rings true to those of us who have seen 'After Lately', Handler's new show about being behind the scenes of her infamous talk show. Working for the childlike Handler must be a challenge, because with a friend like her, you definitely wouldn't need any enemies! However, if you had any, she would probably ruin their immediate futures with a few well-places lies, and film the whole ensuing mess to watch with a bag of popcorn. That's kind of a nice, if messed-up, trait to have in a friend. I think.

Rating: four stars out of five. A fun, refreshing read about craziness you're glad is happening to someone else!