The Hottest Girl at Burn Camp by Krystal Evans review: 'I did not laugh once reading this'

Krystal Evans’s exploration of her troubled childhood may have worked as a Fringe show, but it doesn’t really succeed as a book, writes Stuart Kelly

Readers who experience a shudder of déjà vu on seeing the title of this book, or indeed the author’s listing in the Edinburgh International Book Festival programme, are not losing their senses. The Hottest Girl at Burn Camp had a previous incarnation as a Fringe show in 2023, when Jay Richardson, reviewing for this paper, wrote, “this feels like a show that to some extent [Krystal Evans] had to divest herself of before she can fully flourish as a stand-up.”

Krystal Evans: The Hottest Girl at Burn Camp | Matt Crockett

Similarly, my colleague Gaby Souter interviewed Evans, who discussed having tried “a bunch of different ways to tell the story”, and namechecked other practitioners of stand-up tragicomedy, notably the “massively inspirational” Hannah Gadsby. Gadsby occurs again here, on p. 270, with Evans professing anxiety that some “snidey” comedians will dismiss her with “O great, are you gonna pull a Hannah Gadsby?”

I didn’t see the show, but I do know a bit about books. If a typical Fringe show is an hour long, the script should come in at around 9,000 words; an average 300 page book will be roughly 90,000 words. In short, whatever you had for the live show is going to have to be significantly longer to become a book. The page, strangely, is a far less forgiving space than the stage, and requires far more of a relationship of trust. It’s therefore a risky strategy to begin a book daring the reader that “if you can laugh at something, that shows that you have the power and not the thing. And yes, I know not everyone operates this way – because some people are truly humourless c***s”.

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This is the synopsis in Evans’s words: “I’ve battled within my own heart on the question of whether anyone would even want to hear about the events of my childhood. My house burned down when I was 14 years old and my six-year-old sister Katie died in the fire. It was undeniably a total f***ing tragedy, and I would not blame you at all if you put this book down right now.” The book, however, is the story of how she “emerged not only sane, but as a person who tells jokes for a living”.

The background to this is her dysfunctional childhood: her mother is mentally ill, life is chaotic and erratic. It includes an expedient and short-lived marriage to a 91-year-old, a pet dog that is decidedly lupine, a car crash and her mother phone-stalking her boyfriend’s family. In terms of how it came to be a Fringe show, this is sketchier, but it involves smoking weed, studying at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and marrying a Scottish chef. At the outset (page 3) she tells us the title is a quip from a friend. All well and good, except exactly the same story reappears on p. 275.

Such material can be handled with both wit and empathy. Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy is an example of a book capable of being hilarious, wise and unbelievable at the same time. But Lockwood is a poet, and Evans is a stand-up comedian. It is telling to note which books she does mention: the Harry Potter and Twilight series and stories by Roald Dahl. Screens seem to be the primary cultural reference point: the Simpsons, Star Trek: First Contact, Crash Bandicoot, Zelda, Donkey Kong, The Breakfast Club, The Grinch.

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There are two significant books: Evans reads Playing Sick? by Marc Feldman, about Munchausen’s Syndrome, which does give some insight into her mother’s condition given she seems to suffer from comas, paraplegic disability, triple pneumonia, brain cancer and many other ailments. But this is not explored terribly far, or with much empathy. Suzanna O’Sullivan’s It’s All In Your Head is very sensitive about such matters: if someone is claiming all these things, then something is very wrong, just not what they are saying. The other text of note is the foreword by Glenn Goldberg to Dave Pelzer’s notorious misery memoir, A Child Called It. Evans attends a “GUTS for Teens” event, it being a support group run by Goldberg, where she learns about Enablers, Abusers and Victims. (We don’t learn what GUTS stands for).

Pelzer was dogged by claims of exaggeration by other family members, one of whom accused him of fire-starting, curiously. All this seems to me to be material that could have been deeply explored, but isn’t. Towards the end, Evans goes back to the scene of the fire and her sister’s grave, in search of answers and closure, but admits it all finishes “anticlimactically”. Questions of culpability and forgiveness are suspended.

There is an over-reliance on both capitals and italics to denote import, and the second half of the book is padded out with letters Evans wrote at the prompting of her therapist. This is queasy. If there was a benefit, it was surely for her, not the reader. Other questions hover. What impact did the family’s Mormonism have? Where were social services? What was the impact of having lived in squalor? The main thing is, I did not laugh once reading this. Call me humourless.

The Hottest Girl at Burn Camp, by Krystal Evans, Monoray, £18

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