Reviews of the Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Megan Mullaly

April 17, 2022 Post a Comment

(image courtesy Penguin Commonwealth of australia)

Information technology needs to be said right from the starting time that I have fallen hopelessly and irrevocably in love with Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) and Megan Mullally (Volition & Grace) over the grade of reading their delightfully-candid and hilariously funny volume The Greatest Dearest Story Ever Told.

So y'all can osculation cheerio to any promise that this review volition be fifty-fifty slightly balanced and subjective because I accept Stockholm Syndrome'd the hell out of both of them as they conversationally share their thoughts on everything from love and religion to jigsaws, fame and unorthodox things to exercise in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican.

In a book that features a automobile chase – well, a race to become to the Emmys on fourth dimension which both Nick and Megan hold is pretty much the aforementioned thing, even if it does happen on pes with the former carrying the beautifully-coiffed latter on his back down barricaded streets – much musing on the weighting of domestic activities by each member of a couple and the possibility that sex might shortly be on the table after eighteen years of union (they are kidding … or are they?), the sense you become most profoundly is of a couple who really, I hateful really, like each other.

We are told repeatedly that you must really like your life partner equally equally much as you love them, and while that'due south indeed true (in my feel at least; I similar spending fourth dimension with my guy every bit as much as I honey him to bits), information technology can feel really abstract until you run into a couple like Nick and Megan who radiate a liking for each other than is damn near contagious.

MEGAN: "We'd met in April. This was July 4th. We'd been making out for, like, two months at this betoken. At the high point of the fireworks, at the ultimate moment of this night, I turned to nick, brought him close, and whispered in his ear, 'I want y'all to be my boyfriend.' Because we strange every bit it may sound, we weren't even officially boyfriend and girlfriend. I hadn't even gone that far yet. And the next dark, July fifth …"

NICK: "There were more fireworks." (laughs)

Now, you might remember that it'southward a confection, a ploy to audio like they like each other for the base capitalist means of selling lots of books (the proceeds of which may, or may not, pay for a home studio) but honestly in this instance, I don't think that'southward the case at all.

Leaving aside the fact that Nick and Megan come across as genuinely into each other in every Idiot box interview I have seen them do (see beneath) – they are actors, yes, but yous can't fake actual, real connection or chemistry – because the book is washed in a conversational manner, recorded as a back-and-forth conversation between the two sitting in various hotel rooms (such is the life of an role player/musician/raconteur/writer/public object of Instagram'd affection), you genuinely get a real sense of a couple who like each other holding along on the topic at hand.

Any the issue up for discussion and they range broadly from career goals to meeting each other to religion to upbringing to doing jigsaws, there's a wonderful warmth and connexion that comes through, a real sense that these ii people take talked long and difficult and deep virtually things and arrived at points that brand sense not just to them equally individuals but as a couple.

It makes The Greatest Honey Story Ever Told a joy to read as a event because while celebrity tomes where the writer makes merry with the topic at manus are an unmitigated, mirth-filled delight to read – meet The Last Blackness Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish or Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper – y'all don't always become the feeling you are the recipient of the real unvarnished personage at play.

That'due south non to say that the Tiffany Haddishes and Ellie Kempers of this globe aren't being genuine but they are writing alone and by definition not bouncing off someone that would illuminate other parts of who they are that don't fall into the singular prose they souvenir us.

With Nick and Megan, of course (yes, we've bonded in a pretty close mode over the course of some 260-plus pages such that we're now a first proper name basis; they don't know that simply we are), you go all kinds of brilliantly-articulate musings – Nick belongings along on why he believes faith is both good and advertisement (the erstwhile, a little; the latter, by and large) is worth the cost of the book lone every bit is Megan speaking about her childhood with honesty and credence and vulnerability in equal measure – that bounciness of each other in an e'er-growing, and highly-rewarding mountain of insights, lived-experiences, observations and home truths.

Non only that, just the strength and personality of their relationships shines through, powerfully, also.

Information technology's clear theirs is non a life lived in the spotlight – they acknowledge information technology happens because they're public figures only they don't actively seek it out and avert wallowing in information technology whenever possible while remaining grateful for their fact their careers are so profile they are in that position – only i which is primarily lived in woodworking projects completed, books read, jigsaws done and shared on Instagram (the section of the book which displays these photos is a hoot of epic proportions) and life shared where it'southward just them – two people who met and fell in dearest working on a play in L.A. in 2000, who've learned from each other about family unit life, music, acting, and all mode of things and are more than happy for information technology to continue for as long every bit they both shall live.

NICK: "Sex got so much meliorate when I permit all of this teenage angst roll of me and said, 'Hey, what parts of you do yous like me to practise this to?' Getting into a coincidental, comfortable, and mutual sexual relationship."

MEGAN: "I hope you lot find that someday."

NICK: "(Whispers) Thank you."

By the terminate of The Greatest Dear Story Ever Told , you lot actually feel like you know Nick and Megan.

Clearly, not besides every bit you know your friends and family who, last I checked, practice exist for you lot across the pages of a very entertaining book, but in a way that you don't frequently feel similar you do know people in the public centre.

It is withal a curated sense of knowing, of course, since it's highly hundred-to-one the two of them spilled admittedly everything nigh themselves, and likewise, even if they had, it's all out of a day-to-twenty-four hours context for usa anyway, but it'southward feels close in a style that makes you feel like these would be two people you would really like to know.

And, most importantly on this, the Solar day of the Valentines, people whose relationship yous'd similar to emulate considering it comes across as real, grounded, fun, thoughtful, caring, intuitive, sexy, silly, serious and all those things anyone would want if they meet the one, fall in love and take gloriously-clever photos of jigsaws they accept done.

So yes, get ahead and fall in dear with Nick and Megan as you read
The Greatest Love Story Ever Told considering it's going to happen and just like their gloriously good love story, which as told by them is pretty damn dandy, yous should just sit dorsum and savour it.