Rachel Dratch, Girl Walks into a Bar

Laugh-out-loud wit and plenty of self-deprecation
“Where have you been?” is the question former Saturday Night Live funnywoman Rachel Dratch is most frequently asked, and with her humorous memoir Girl Walks into a Bar, now we know. With stories of her struggle to find an identity at Dartmouth, a “that’s show biz” dismissal from 30 Rock, the insulting roles offered to her (obese ugly old lesbians) and misadventures in romance along the way, Dratch’s tale occasionally threatens to lurch into the territory of the actress’ famous SNL character Debbie Downer. But Dratch always rescues these tales from a “woe is me” vibe with laugh-out-loud wit and self-deprecation. Dratch’s love of comedy, from her funny family to her days playing with her friends atChicago’sSecondCity, trumps every anecdote. Dratch’s story is left open-ended, as a surprise pregnancy (the actress originally mistook the symptoms of pregnancy for early-onset menopause) shook up her life and threw a burgeoning relationship into a to-this-day ill-defined state. For an entertainer who has come to make the most of the curveballs life has thrown her way, Dratch’s story is best left as it is, without a neatly-wrapped finale, letting readers know that the lack of a definitive “happily ever after” isn’t necessarily a bad thing.