-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A Memoir
by Jenny Pentland
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 working-class Denver. But that was only the beginning of the drama. Roseanne Barr's success as a comedian catapulted the family from the Rockies to star-studded 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 self-help 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 deep-seated 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.
"[I]mmensely affecting and hilarious...Pentland has a scathing, unapologetic wit, and it's on full display throughout her chronicle of navigating the 'parallel-reality version' of her tumultuous adolescence and eventually finding her real-life happily-ever-after with her husband and sons. This intimate portrayal of the dark side of Hollywood is hard to put down." - Publishers Weekly
"This complex, scathingly funny memoir about dealing with the toxic glow of fame offers an intimate look at a woman's struggle to shape a life on her own terms. Pentland also provides a unique angle on the cult of celebrity and how its effects ripple out far beyond just the celebrity. A mordantly poignant memoir of finding oneself amid hectic external forces." - Kirkus Reviews
"The daughter of comedian Roseanne Barr recounts her unusual childhood with humor and self-deprecation...Offers plenty of heart and laughs, especially for children of the 1980s and 1990s." - Booklist
"Jenny Pentland tells her mostly very funny story with wisdom and heart, and her devotion to the concept of family, even with all its challenges, is just plain inspirational. I love this book!" - Andy Richter
"This Will Be Funny Later is hilarious, heartbreaking, and deftly written. Jenny pulls you in like an old friend and lays out her life with wit and guts. I just wanted to keep on reading. She wrote the hell out of this book." - Karen Kilgariff
"This Will Be Funny Later is equal parts hilarious, poignant, and horrifying. This book will cure you of any desire to be famous or famous-adjacent." - Alice Bradley
This information about This Will Be Funny Later was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jenny Pentland is a writer, mother, and hobby farmer. The daughter of Roseanne Barr, she, along with her sister, inspired the characters Becky and Darlene on her mother's long-running eponymous television series Roseanne. Pentland and her family live in Hawaii.
If you liked This Will Be Funny Later, try these:
by Erika J.. Simpson
Published 2026
From "a writer who's absolutely going places" (Roxane Gay), a remarkable, inventive debut memoir about a mother-daughter relationship across cycles of poverty, separation, and illness, exploring how we forge identity in the face of imminent loss.
by Rosena Fung
Published 2024
A powerful coming-of-age graphic novel about how mothers and daughters pass down—and rebel against—standards of size, gender, race, beauty, and worth.
by Ashley C.. Ford
Published 2022
One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the looming absence of her incarcerated father.
L.A. Women by Ella Berman
Two ambitious writers in 1960s LA face betrayal when one writes a novel based on the other's life.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
