The Girl in the Show by Anna Fields is very all over the place.
Some points are stronger than others.
it's great that she has such a wide reach and interviews many contemporary comedians. But it's a little too focused on Lucille Ball.

Parts of this were fascinating. It made me want to go out and do crazy research just to write a school paper. But as a whole I had trouble making myself continue reading it. I am glad that I did but it was a struggle at times.

The Girl in the Show is a very well written, well researched look at how comedy and female comedians have developed during the 20th century into the 21st. The concepts were interesting - women's involvement in a stereotypical male dominated field, and just feminism in general. That said, the book was SLOW and took me a long time to get through. This book isn't a lighthearted book about comedy - it's a deep dive, highly informative look into the history of women in comedy.

Sllooooooowwwww….. good, but slow. I found myself checking how much progress I made way more often than I should have. Part of that was due to the chapter lengths. They were REALLY long and it made those sections feel like they moved slower. Speed aside, it could’ve done with more chapters just from an organizational standpoint.

This book gives the reader the opportunity to learn quite a bit about women in comedy, specifically the ones that broke barriers and glass ceilings, paving the way for many of our favorite modern women. There was a pretty big discrepancy in the feel of the description compared to the actual book. The blurb lead me to believe it would be more of a lighthearted humorous book and it was definitely not that. It’s much more analytical and almost academic at times. To say it is well researched would be a drastic understatement. Fields did her homework and did it well. I would’ve likely enjoyed it more had my expectations of what type of book I thought it would be had better lined up with the type of book it actually turned out to be. You’ll walk away with a better understanding of comedienne-ballerinas of yesteryear and an appreciate for all that women still currently face in the comedy world today.




Disclaimer: I received a free advanced digital copy from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

When I picked this book from Netgalley, I was expecting to read the stories of the great ladies of comedy, current and past. I expected to understand how they got to be great at their craft. When I started reading, I noticed that the book started from a very heavy, even dark place, highlighting the pain, suffering, scars that dot the careers of the women studied in the book. While I understand that pain is an important part in human growth, I was a little taken aback by the choice of this side to start telling these stories. As the book was getting heavier and heavier, I lost interest. Couldn't finish it.
I respect the amount of research made here, but it really isn't my type of reading.

Anna Fields has done the work. Instead of a light hearted romp, with funny backstories (I mean, they are in there but it's not the focus), The Girl in the Show is an analytical look at the history and evolution of women in the comedy entertainment industry.

With interviews including Broad City's Abby Jacobson and Mad TV's Mo Collins, we hear directly from the women who are working hard at making us laugh. We read about the personal and political strides women have made and we feel the power that is growing every day.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Like many other books on feminism and sexism within a specific industry, it started to feel a bit repetitive. That doesn't mean it isn't true, but it does mean that I felt that I hard heard many of the same things before.

The Girl in the Show is a nonfiction about Comedy, women’s place in it and how it reflects our society.

This was a very interesting book with captivating, funny and touching moments.
However, the chapters were so long I had trouble staying focused. it took me forever to finish this book. Same problem within the chapters, some sentences were so long, they lost me from time to time...
Still, I learnt a bunch of stuff, it was kinda great.

The Girl in the Show is an alternate history of women in comedy. It tries very hard to frame women comics’ careers in terms of sexism preventing their success. The interviews are interspersed with feminist rants that have nothing to do with the industry or the women in question. The entire second to last chapter is Fields’ take on Roe v. Wade.

Fields calls the women comedienne-ballerinas (the inscription on Gilda Radner’s tombstone), which is pointlessly laborious. But half the comedienne-ballerinas she interviews avoid or deny her angle, despite her pressing the issue. They keep insisting that success comes from hard work and personal development. If you learn to make people laugh, nothing can stop you. That’s advice Fields doesn’t seem to want to hear. If you’ve followed the industry closely (as I have for nearly 60 years), the women’s stories are very familiar, because they’re almost identical to the men’s stories. Comedy is a profession. You need to apprentice. You need to listen, practice, hone, adapt, and fail. And repeat. For life. You put up with abject misery, insults, negativity and outright blockages. For decades. But you build a brand – consistent, dependable, recognizable. Most young comics fail completely, because their approach is that the audience must accept their Attitude, honed in high school, and accept their laugh lines, which are few are far between. The good ones invent a persona and grow it over years. It does not come from just showing up. And while women have significant additional prejudices to overcome, they suffer the same ugly family situations, miserable childhoods, and lack of breaks that men undergo. You need determination, an open mind and a thick skin, but Fields’ blames the externality of sexism in the case of women. She rails at length against the (often self-imposed) restrictions on Lucille Ball’s character Lucy Ricardo, but completely ignores the fact that 99% of sitcom males are jerks, incompetents and submissives. Playing those characters is no less demeaning for men than the roles some women get. Fields then goes off in a very defensive direction, criticizing the world for making comedienne-ballerinas dress nicely, be attractive, speak without inflections, and generally – fit better than their own inclinations.

This is not an investigative book. Fields does not approach it as journalism. She is here to make a point, and her interviews are slanted to make it. She presses comedienne-ballerinas when she doesn’t get the answer she wants, and eventually several come around to agreeing that feminism is key to women in comedy. It reads like they’re trying to be polite to her.

For Fields, the patroness-saint of comedy is Gilda Radner. She pops up repeatedly in nearly every chapter, and appreciatively, as a martyr for the feminist cause. She and Lucy get the most ink. Fields asks pretty much everyone a variation of What would Gilda say?

At bottom this is a book about and promoting feminism, using women comedians as its whipping child. They deserve better.

David Wineberg