This Will Be Funny Later

A funny biting and entertaining memoir of coming of age in the shadow of celebrity and finding your own way in the face of absolute chaos that is both a moving portrait of a complicated family and an exploration of the cost of fame. Growing up Jenny Pentland’s life was a literal sitcom. Many of the storylines for her mother’s smash hit series Roseanne were drawn from Pentland’s early family life in workingclass Denver. But that was only the beginning of the drama. Roseanne Barr’s success as a comedian catapulted the family from the Rockies to starstudded Hollywood—with its toxic culture of money celebrity and prying tabloids that was destabilizing for a child in grade school. By adolescence Jenny struggled with anxiety and eating issues. Her parents and new stepfather struggling to help responded by sending Jenny and her siblings on a grand tour of the selfhelp movement of the ’80s—from fat camps to brat camps wilderness survival programs to drug rehab clinics even though Jenny didn’t take drugs. Becoming an adult all Jenny wanted was to get married and have kids despite Roseanne’s admonishments not to limit herself to being just a wife and mother. In this scathingly funny and moving memoir Pentland reveals what it’s like to grow up as the daughter of a television star and how she navigated the turmoil eventually finding her own path. Now happily married and raising five sons on a farm Pentland has worked tirelessly to create the stable family she never had while coming to terms at last with her deepseated anxiety. This Will Be Funny Later is a darkly funny and frank chronicle of transition from childhood to adulthood and motherhood—one woman’s journey to define herself and create the life she always wanted.