A funny, candid and often heartbreaking essay collection, You’re Embarrassing Yourself documents mortifying episodes in the life of Iranian-American film-maker and actor Desiree Akhavan’s life, dating back to childhood when she was voted the ugliest girl in her school. Her book is partly a letter to her younger self, whom she reassures that her face and body “will settle into something you’ll be able to live with by the time you’re 30”, and a paean to readers who “clutch the moniker ‘loser’ close to [their] heart. At first, it’ll feel like a handicap, but eventually it’ll transform into a superpower, because being on the outside offers up the best vantage point from which to observe and skewer.”

Akhavan narrates, her compelling delivery veering between archly amused, as she recalls her more ludicrous moments, and mournful, as she relives the damage she inflicted on herself in her formative years. At college, she had anorexia and bulimia; at this time her parents also persuaded her to have surgery to reduce the size of her nose. Eventually Akhavan joined a recovery programme for her eating disorders where she looked at the other patients and thought “what a tragic bunch of basic bitches … It took me weeks to realise they were all me. I was staring at 13 Desirees.” While this is no tale of redemption, age brings a degree of acceptance of herself and her flaws. “I’ll always be embarrassing but I’m beginning to lose my embarrassment. The sharp sting of humiliation grows dull when you realise you’re going to keep making a fool of yourself, because that’s what it is to be alive.”

Available via 4th Estate, 5hr 19min

Further listening

Eight Weeks
Lola Young, Penguin Audio, 8hr 23min
Baroness Young reads her account of growing up in the British care system, being rejected by her birth parents and her path to the House of Lords.

Middlemarch
George Eliot, SNR Audio, 32hr 41min
Eliot’s sweeping tale of industry and social change, as witnessed by the residents of a fictional town in the Midlands, is read by Lucy Scott.