Sure, I'll Join Your Cult

Maria Bamford has spent her life joining things. Her memoir is organised around three of them: the family she grew up in, the entertainment industry she works in, and the mental health system she has been treated by, all of which she is willing to describe as cults, mostly affectionately.

Inside that she catalogues the twelve-step fellowships she has actually attended, Debtors Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous among them, along with the hypomanic episodes that punctuate the story, from anxiety about selling out to enforcing union rules on the set of her own Netflix show in order to protect her health.

She writes about bipolar II, OCD and psychiatric hospitalisation without turning any of it into either a tragedy or a lesson, and the comedy is load-bearing rather than decorative. There are also, at intervals and without much explanation, recipes for fudge.