Like so many people, I read Brosch's first book, Hyperbole and a Half, years ago and loved it dearly, and was sad when Brosch kind of disappeared for so long. And so I met the news that Solutions and Other Problems was to be published with surprise and excitement.

It's been long enough since read Hyperbole and a Half--with the exception of isolated essays (can I call them essays?)--that I can't really compare the two reliably, which is probably good. I'm happy to judge Solutions and Other Problems largely on its own merits.

There are some similarities, of course. There are still stories about dogs doing dumb things, and there are still the intentionally grotesque illustrations that can reduce me to laughter in one panel. But this book feels like it was written from a different perspective, and I mean, it has. The family tragedy and health problems that Brosch describes are the kinds of events that irrevocably change a person.

So along with the dumb dogs and stories of 3-year-old Brosch sneaking into her neighbor's house, you get a very strong sense of an author who has come to view life as inherently meaningless. Which is fine. I agree. But when you arrive at the conclusion that life has no inherent meaning, you're confronted with a decision to either descend into nihilism or to construct meaning for your own life. There are moments when Brosch seems to have chosen to descend rather than to construct, but one could interpret the existence of this book in and of itself to refute the claim that she's a nihilist. Even if that's a claim that I think Brosch might make about herself.