Book review of Spellbound by Phil Hanley

Canadian comedian and former model Phil Hanley’s debut memoir, Spellbound: My Life as a Dyslexic Wordsmith, is refreshingly frank, disarmingly vulnerable and, yes, frequently hilarious.

Thanks to appearances on late-night talk shows, two comedy specials and regular gigs at Manhattan’s Comedy Cellar, Hanley’s known for his sharp wit and masterful crowd work. But he wasn’t always at ease in the spotlight. Years of frustrating, humiliating struggle in a school system not equipped nor inclined to support students like Hanley—diagnosed with severe dyslexia—ensured he shrank away. Reading aloud was excruciating: “Looking at a block of text was like trying to memorize an abstract painting,” he writes.

After his hard-won high school graduation, Hanley wondered, “What do you do when you’re eighteen years old and out of school and have no plans for the future?” Well, you say yes when your friend Shalom (Harlow, the 1990s supermodel) asks if you want to try modeling. Hanley posed for Armani and Dolce & Gabbana, but his heart wasn’t in it. No matter: “Modeling wasn’t my goal, but it was leading me somewhere,” he writes. “Being directionless is only a bad thing if you let it prevent you from moving.”

And move Hanley did, to the U.K. and Vancouver and New York City, his life populated with generous friends, devotion to the Grateful Dead and a burning desire to become a comedian. Self-doubt lingered: “How could I be a comedy writer when I struggled to read a takeout menu?” But Hanley developed his own systems. Most comics jot ideas in a tiny notebook; he uses giant canvases. Some comics meander to the punchline; a shorter attention span yielded “concise jokes that were precisely worded.”

And all comedians rehearse until their jokes are second nature and the stage feels like home. Readers will cheer for Hanley as he achieves that comfort level with his comedy craft and learning disability alike: “I now wear my dyslexia as a badge of honor.” Spellbound will resonate with fans of Simu Liu’s We Were Dreamers, James Tate Hill’s Blind Man’s Bluff and Amy Schumer’s The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo: It’s an inspiring, well-written tale of overcoming adversity and self-doubt that’s plenty funny, too.