BOOK REVIEW: I’ll Show Myself Out
by Jessi Klein

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ABOUT THE BOOKS (from Amazon):

An instant New York Times bestseller, I’ll Show Myself Out is the eagerly anticipated second essay collection from Jessi Klein, author of the acclaimed debut You’ll Grow Out of It.

Longlisted for the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

“Sometimes I think about how much bad news there is to tell my kid, the endlessly long, looping CVS receipt scroll of truly terrible things that have happened, and I want to get under the bed and never come out. How do we tell them about all this? Can we just play Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire and then brace for questions? The first of which should be, how is this a song that played on the radio?”

In New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Jessi Klein’s second collection, she hilariously explodes the cultural myths and impossible expectations around motherhood and explore the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife. 

In interconnected essays like “Listening to Beyoncé in the Parking Lot of Party City,” “Your Husband Will Remarry Five Minutes After You Die,” “Eulogy for My Feet,” and “An Open Love Letter to Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent,” Klein explores this stage of life in all its cruel ironies, joyous moments, and bittersweetness.

Written with Klein’s signature candor and humanity, I’ll Show Myself Out is an incisive, moving, and often uproarious collection.

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I listened to the audiobook version of I’ll Show Myself Out by Jessi Klein while running. I found it decently entertaining and a quick read.

I don’t know that I love the essay style in books. It can be entertaining but feel kind of all over the place.

I do love how the author would weave seemingly totally unrelated stories together within each essay. And I do think new-ish moms might enjoy this book. The author is about my age (early 40s) at the time of the writing, but she’s the mother of a toddler. As I was reading it, I kept thinking of a friend who has a child around the same age and thought she would enjoy the stories of chaos and motherhood. I remember those days, but I’m a little further from it.

I did find some parts of her stories to be a bit crass at times, as is often the case with female comedians. Nothing horribly offensive, but just something to be aware of.

Overall, it was a quick read and entertaining.