Window Shopping for God: A Comedian’s Search for Meaning

In this offbeat memoir, Kimmett (That Which Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Funnier) traces her struggles to find meaning in religion and her reconciliation with her terminally ill brother. “Over my lifetime, I’d bowed down to the feet of them all,” Kimmett writes of her dalliances with Christianity, Buddhism, Sufism, witchcraft, and “the real gods” of “booze, men, and Facebook.” In 2014, when a street preacher implored Kimmett to repent, it stirred new urgency within her, given that her brother, Kevin, whose literal-mindedness made him a black sheep in Kimmett’s family, had recently been diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor. The two reconnected, but when Kevin died a year later, Kimmett was cast adrift, spiritually wounded and struggling anew. As she describes her efforts to find her footing, Kimmett flashes back to faith-related episodes throughout her life, including a feminist stand-up set she performed at an Ontario Islamic Center and her unsettling experience giving birth to a premature daughter. Through it all, Kimmett’s humor (“After all that time and money, you’d think Amazon would have delivered me a deity in which I could believe with complete certainty”) perfectly counterbalances the material’s gravity. This offers solace to those puzzling out their own place in the universe. (Sept.)

This review has been updated.