Maybe something like The glass castle from Jeannette Walls.
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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I read these books as a kid: A series of unfortunate events
Count Olaf: "Going my way?"
Catch 22
Probably a little different than what you're describing but I'm reading blood meridian right now and it's very good. It's about a 14-year-old runaway in 1850s America where everything is fucked. He gets in increasingly desperate and violent situations to try and survive
Slaughterhouse-Five
My journal
Great Expectations
A wolf at the table
Like Wind Against Rock by Nancy Kim
Model Home by Rivers Solomon
The Book of Dead Birds by Gayle Brandeis
Sisters One, Two, Three by Nancy Star
Some Kind of Happiness by Claire Legrand
Take a look at the works of David Sedaris. Those fit the description, and are funny.
I was surprised how heart wrenching Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was. Growing up I heard it was about meatpacking plants in Chicago. Technically correct, but very much a tale of things not going well. Enjoyed the journey despite the sadness!
Job
Once Were Warriors
Once Were Warriors is Alan Duff's harrowing vision of his country's indigenous people two hundred years after the English conquest. In prose that is both raw and compelling, it tells the story of Beth Heke, a Maori woman struggling to keep her family from falling apart, despite the squalor and violence of the housing projects in which they live. Conveying both the rich textures of Maori tradition and the wounds left by its absence, Once Were Warriors is a masterpiece of unblinking realism, irresistible energy, and great sorrow.
Dysfunction, alcoholism, domestic violence.
But it's not funny, sorry OP.
I'm ok if it's not funny. I'm debating buying A Little Life as it's about a guy who's trying to get away from his past traumas or something like that.
I haven't read This is Where I Leave, so don't know how similar it is, but I really liked Demon Copperhead & it fits your criteria - trials and hardship but with some humor.
Demon Copperhead is a good book! I liked how Barbara described his birth as him in a bag or something. It was very descriptive.
I have an e-book reader, so I looked it up: "Mom had her own version of the day I was born, which I never believed, considering she was passed out for the event. Not that I'm any witness, being a newborn infant plus inside a bag. But I knew Mrs. Peggot's story. And if you spent even a day in the company of her and my mom, you would know which of those two lotto tickets was going to pay out."
Something like that, yeah. It's the part when the neighbor discovers the baby in like a gray sack or something? I remember something about boxing being said. I'll re-read the chapter.
The Death of Bunny Munro
Appearantly they are doing a tv series based on the book now.
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen features a pretty dysfunctional family and has some funny bits.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is probably one of my favorite novels and has both a dysfunctional family and characters living in a halfway house. It's main motif is addiction, be it to entertainment or substance. However, at a over 1000 pages and with a non-linear plot, it might require some persistence to get through.
Naive Super