Everyone has their own favorite columnist from The Onion.  Some like Jim Anchower; others prefer Herbert "Tha H-Dogg" Kornfeld.  For me, it's always been Jean Teasdale.

I first found Jean Teasdale's columns some time in 1998.  (I have always lived outside the range of the paper version, and only read the website.)  For a while, her columns seemed to be fairly regular.  But I noticed that they had been tapering off over the last few years.

Turns out, it's because a book was in the works!

Jean Teasdale is the quintessential underdog.  She embodies the sublime beauty of failure.  She was Liz Lemon before Liz Lemon was cool.  (Heck, Liz Lemon looks like a rock star compared to Jean.) 

Jean Teasdale lives in the Midwest, where she has been fired from a long string of part-time and entry-level jobs.  She likes kitty cats, chocolate, and scented candles.  She is married to Rick Teasdale (known as Hubby Rick), a hard-drinking man who works at a tire store, spends every evening at Tacky's Tavern, and hates her cats.

All of this is little more than the recipe for Yet Another Wacky Sitcom.  Except that Jean Teasdale's writer (Maria Schneider) imbues her with a depth of character that I would not have believed possible.  There is pathos aplenty, of course.  But it's more than "ha ha look at that sad fat chick."  It's the surprising flashes of horror, rage, or confusion.   All of which are always filtered through Teasdale's trademark Super Mega Cheerful voice, of course.

It's never anything big.  Just a quick flick of the curtain, enough to reveal a flash of something heartbreaking at the back of the stage.  Like an entry from her dream journal, where she describes her (completely unacknowledged) suicidal ideation.  Or the way she can't stop buying baby clothes, for the baby that she is convinced she will one day have.

But mostly, Jean Teasdale is hilariously, flagrantly, vivaciously… well, she's just so very Jean Teasdale!  If you enjoy her columns, then you will triple quadruple love her book. 

I expected a retread of her old columns from The Onion, and there is a bit of that, it's true.  But oh, there is so much more. 

Recipes, for example.  Crazy-ass recipes that have way too many ingredients, which no one should ever prepare, much less eat.  Like "Better Than Sex Cocoa Brown Sugar Caramel Brownies With Hazelnut Mint Glaze."

And plenty of vintage Jean, from her cat who hates her (but loves Hubby Rick) to her fondness for scented candles.  ("The biggest treat about scented candles is lighting them all at once and letting their fragrances waft and mingle.  In minutes, my home smells like an apple cinnamon lavender lilac violet orange blossom sandalwood sea breeze!")

But by far the biggest surprise was Hubby Rick himself.  For the first 225 pages, he exists only in the occasional scribbled insult in the margin.  Oh, and a chapter where he lists all the things he has set on fire.  (???)  Until the end of the book, when…

Oh, but I won't spoil it for you.  You'll just have to get a copy and see for yourself.