You’re Embarrassing Yourself by Desiree Akhavan review

From Tina Fey’s Bossypants to Samantha Irby’s We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, there is a rich modern American tradition of female essay-style narrative nonfiction. These books usually tread a line between autobiography, cultural analysis and “here’s a self-deprecating account of my dating life and career”. Their success – and their enjoyability – largely depends on the voice. Does this account of themselves sound plausible? Or are they exaggerating for effect? Do they – despite their (usual) proximity to celebrity – sound like a real person? Are they trying too hard at the self-deprecation?

By this measure, You’re Embarrassing Yourself by Desiree Akhavan succeeds easily, whether you know her work well or not. She has been a director on the HBO Max series Hacks and Hulu’s Tiny Beautiful Things, and made her own films including Appropriate Behaviour and The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Akhavan is that rare thing: both painfully honest and likable. It’s not that anyone has to be likable in their own memoir, or indeed in real life, just that it’s hard to spend a whole book in the company of someone annoying or fake.

The writing is smart and funny as Akhavan traces how she has tried to build her confidence over the first 40 years of her life: by falling in and out of love and by becoming increasingly comfortable with sometimes defining herself as gay, sometimes as bisexual; by realising that she can succeed in her work despite her lack of self-belief; and, finally, by realising that you don’t need to “succeed” at anything – love, work, life or family – to be a half-decent person. You can just muddle through and that will still be fine.

In the first half, Akhavan captures the intense adolescent cringe of friendships and dating, which she sees as a sort of “pre-swan” phase. In the second, as she turns 30, she experiences the life she had always hoped for when Appropriate Behaviour is released and becomes a hit. She is no longer a loser, no longer feels humiliated most of the time, and has to recognise that maybe she is not so bad after all.

But despite the breezy humour, it’s obvious to the reader that the real reason she has felt awkward for so long has nothing to do with her supposedly defective looks or her personality: though born in New York in 1984, Akhavan feels like an immigrant and is treated as such. In the latter part of the book she charts her parents’ flight from Iran in 1980 and relays half-told glimpses of the life they left behind. She learns “to be American” by watching television, with her mum and dad out working every hour of the day to earn the money to give her and her brother the most expensive education possible. She cites this as the reason she became a film-maker. (“For the longest time it was just the two of us parked silently in front of a television.”)

Her career as a writer, actor and director offers a solution to the problem of not-belonging. If she can make the not-belonging into something that other people can celebrate and champion – on film and on TV – then she can make a virtue of her outsider status. She half-jokingly crowns herself “Queer Iranian Female Director” when her second film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, wins the grand jury prize at Sundance in 2018. But the ascent is bittersweet and any sense of triumph short lived. She soon finds that her joy in the prize is marred by being pigeonholed or at least having to “play the game”.

In the aftermath of Sundance, Akhavan hates having to grin and bear it as some narcissistic Hollywood investor pitches a film at her and hates herself for needing the money, the break and the approval: “Quick, start trying to get the job. He needs a Middle Eastern woman with a few features under her belt or he’ll look racist, and there are only, like, three of us.” The honesty of all this is addictive and endearing, allowing us to see inside a closed world and understand that it is glamorous and exciting and horrible and deeply disappointing all at the same time.

You’re Embarrassing Yourself reminds me of the best of Nora Ephron, who famously “felt bad” about her neck and thought that she had “no breasts”. While you believe Ephron’s insecurity and relish her exploration of her anxiety, you know at the same time that she doesn’t quite mean it. She is simply revealing how foolish we all are in our self-obsession. Akhavan channels this feeling and takes it a step further into self-awareness, without ever losing any of the comedic value of mining your own neurosis. Her final realisation is a kind of self-acceptance, acknowledging that although she does embarrassing things (by which I think she actually means self-defeating things) she does not need to be embarrassed by them. We are all, basically, embarrassing – but that’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

• You’re Embarrassing Yourself by Desiree Akhavan is published by 4th Estate (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.