Jeff's Reviews > You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas

Oh, Augusten Burroughs, why do I love you? You infuriate me sometimes, but I just can’t quit you.

“You Better Not Cry” is not laugh-out-loud hysterical, but rather chuckle-in-the-back-of-your-throat cynicism laced with pull-at-the-heart-strings-despite-yourself sentimentality. The funny thing about Augusten’s breezy Christmas anthology is that for all the times you feel like it is an anti-holiday holiday book, it is actually filled with some extraordinarily lovely moments of … well, the Christmas spirit. Augusten’s Christmas spirit may not be couched in the same terms as Linus’ speech at the end of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” (after all, Linus didn’t have drunken sex with a lascivious 60 year old Santa Claus, did he?), but in the end both stories leave me with the same feeling of gratefulness and warmth. I will have to say, though, that with Burrough’s book I felt like I needed a Silkwood shower to get to those feelings of gratefulness and warmth, but I got there just the same!