I listened to the audio version of Unqualified by Anna Faris and the whole time I kept thinking how awkward it must have been for Anna to have this memoir come out about two months after she announced her divorce to Chris Pratt. There is some hasty editing that alludes to the past tense of their relationship but there are a few essays that probably needed a second look; hell she dedicated the book to Pratt alone (when they have a kid together) and while he wrote the foreword, most likely preseparation, he did not do the audio narration!
“I’ve learned that there are some universal truths: If your closest friends stop showing up to your barbecues, you’re probably in a bad relationship. And if you opt for kindness over teasing, you’re probably in a good one.”
Ignoring the Pratt weirdness Anna’s literary debut is a light, fluffy memoir that also fancies itself an advice column but functions more like an advertisement for her podcast. Overall it is fine but I really struggled with the direction of the audio book. I already mentioned how strange it was to have someone else reading well known actor Chris Pratt’s words but Anna did a lot of “question and answer” style chapters with her assistant “asking” the questions but in the audio Anna read both lines. There were also two “conversation style” essays, one with Chris and one with her podcast partner Sim, and neither of them read their part of the conversation so it was essentially “Chris said…” and then “I said…” which was irritating.
I don’t really consider myself a Faris fan; like most people my aged I saw Scary Movie when it first came out and I’ve seen a few of her other mid-2000s comedies like Just Friends and The House Bunny but I have never seen her current sitcom Mom and if it wasn’t for her marriage to Pratt I would probably forgotten she existed in Hollywood. I did learn a few things about Anna that I didn’t know before, like just how difficult her son Jack’s birth and first few months were, but she was pretty guarded for someone who actively sought out this book deal. Overall this is not a memoir you need to seek out but I do wish Anna all the best…