The WhatsApp group your friends won’t let you join. On Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Mindy Kaling is the understated Kelly Kapoor in the US version of The Office. She was also a director and a writer for the show, which sets the expectations of the book to unreasonably lofty heights. Having known this, one would expect the offbeat and awkward humour, in other words, irony at its best. After having read Amy Poehler’s Yes Please and being absolutely blown away by it, I also expected to like Kaling’s book, but it didn’t reach those heights.

This is a lesson in not expecting anything out of anything you read. Yes, even for those young adult books with vampire romance where everybody is belting out a 6 pack. I did expect, however, to learn more about The Office, which is by this time, an important bulwark to Western contemporary culture. Who hasn’t quoted at least one line from The Office? PARKOUR!

Even though the chapter in The Office is the longest one in the book, it lacks the insights hardcore Office fans scavenge for, but at least we get to see Kaling’s impression of her co-stars.

“Is Steve Carell really as nice as he seems? Is John Krasinski as cool as Jim in real life? What about Rainn Wilson; is he as big an egomaniac as Dwight? The answers are: yes, yes and much, much worse.”

This is also one of the moments which made me chuckle. I have a strange feeling that Rainn Wilson is also one of Kaling’s favourite colleagues. There are some gems that I didn’t know about the show, like how the set is situated in a dead-end next door to a gun parts factory. Often, there are hoons on the streets and the shooting had to stop until the hoons hoon away. Kaling also has a sometimes combative but largely productive writing relationship with Greg Daniels, the man who picked her up. He was also better known to have created The King of the Hill, a show that I didn’t really appreciate when I was a kid (I don’t like hicks) but I might be able to now.

What is doused in generous amounts in the book is Kaling’s own insecurities over the years: growing up in an Indian immigrant household, having few friends, but ones who are close to her, renting a rundown place in New York, a variety of oddjobs before settling in to The Office and her not-quite-toned-not-quite-chubby sort of body — the type of body that Hollywood hates. And perhaps this is the crux of it, that at least for me, it is an average, uninteresting life.

Here’s the other things that I picked up about Kaling from her book:

• She adores Amy Poehler. She’s her hero (and fast becoming mine too)
• She reckons Will Ferrell shouting from the phone booth in Anchorman is one of cinema’s most hilarious moments
• One night stands is just not a thing for her, for safety and logistical reasons (best to give you her full name with ID if she takes you home)
• Don’t expect her to stick around. She’s a serial culprit of pulling an Irish exit (pretending to go somewhere for a second with no intention of coming back)
• She creates fantastic revenge storylines in her head while she’s out jogging, burning calories.