Cate Burns' latest book, Real - Life Real Laughs: Humor When You Need It Most consists of 38 non-fiction vignettes of heartfelt humor that explore drama, vulnerability and adventure from an absurd and quirky point of view. She highlights four themes.
Part One, Through the Needle's Eye, examines adjustment: to someone else's toilet habits, to living with no testosterone or estrogen, to feeling a ghost's power over her, to making friends with a large spider.
Part Two: Friends? ponders the mysteries of friendship, from people who over-confide to a wild seal who rejects Burns' companionship, to bad communication with a young child. She compares four close relationships with males named Henry.
In Part Three, Keeping Sane, Mostly, Burns investigates the limits of experience: fun ways to die, coloring all her clothes and bed sheets red, what happens to noses in dark rooms, and a Countess hairdresser.
Being Brave or Not, Part Four, wonders what courage consists of in situations such as: jumping off a cliff, painting a stadium with boxing gloves, or being hooked on bad relationships. She also reveals a dentist's hidden secret.
Burns expands personal, non-fiction humor, broadening the base from David Sedaris, Curtis Sittenfeld, Mary Karr, and Augusten Burroughs. In the tradition of authors such as Shel Silverstein, Bill Mauldin, Herman Hesse, William Blake and JRR Tolkien, Burns illustrates many vignettes with her original paintings, drawings or family photos, all in color.
