She’s not kidding herself. She knows you’re reading her book in the bathroom. Probably while having a bowel movement. But that’s OK.

“I’m honoured that you’ve chosen to bring me into this very private and vulnerable part of your life,” writes Sarah Silverman in the foreword of her new book, The Bedwetter; Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee, HarperCollins, 2010.

Silverman, a comedian and star of The Sarah Silverman Program, does talk a lot about bodily fluids in her first memoir. From her bedwetting issues – she wet the bed until she was 16, to her first sexual experience, which was highlighted in the chapter Hymen, Goodbyemen, the comedian is in words what she is on stage – spunky, slightly shocking and deceivingly adorable.

But she’s also serious.

Between stories of LSD trips and stripping naked in public 11 times to get a laugh, she also delves into her bout with depression, which lasted through her teen years.

“As quickly and casually as someone catches the flu, I caught depression,” she writes, later explaining that she “felt homesick, but I was home.”

After seeing several counsellors, one of whom hanged himself before a session, Silverman was prescribed Xanax (alprazolam), a benzodiazepine used to treat anxiety and panic disorder –16 pills a day.

She was also bullied as a child. “I probably have been 10 to 12 per cent raped,” she wrote about her experience with a particular bully who, upon hearing that she was a vegetarian, held her down and forced her to eat meat.

Born in 1970, Silverman is the youngest of  four sisters. She grew up in New Hampshire, where she was one of only a handful of Jews.

“Growing up, the only way I really sensed I was a Jew was by dint of the fact that everyone around me was not,” she writes.

This theme is clear throughout the book, especially in the chapter appropriately titled Jew.

As a child, her parents had no other option but to send her to a convent, the only place with a day care.

 When she was a toddler, Silverman learned to swear from her father, who also taught her the power of shock value.  At four, when her Nana asked her if she’d like a brownie, Silverman instructed her to place them up her rear end. Which instantly got a laugh.

And she was hooked.

The comedian eventually dropped out of    New York University and got a job as a writer for Saturday Night Live, where she spent a day dressed as a monkey, stabbed her boss in the head with a pencil and then got fired.

“I can’t actually say which I’d rather believe – that I was fired for stabbing Al Franken in the head, or because in 25 weeks, I’d gotten exactly no sketches on the air,” she writes.

In addition to talking about her comedic journey, Silverman gives readers a peak at what happens behind the scenes of her show, which involves constant censorship battles – like getting Comedy Central to agree to have a gay couple on the show, or  allowing a description of female genitalia in the script.

One of the best things about The Bedwetter is the photos, e-mails, hate mail and hastily scrawled, half-done jokes that Silverman included.

In one fax, the censors were asked to look over a drawing of a penis to make sure it was appropriate for the show. Both the fax and the drawing are in the book.

The Bedwetter does get a little preachy in between the phallic references and urine talk, especially when Silverman discusses  the role of comedy in fighting or supporting racism, but, for anyone with a healthy appreciation for bodily fluids, it’s a quick, fun read.