Quietly hostile Essays

Essayist Irby (Wow, No Thank You) shows off her wit, empathy, and self-deprecating humor in this animated collection. Across 17 essays, Irby contemplates the hysteria of the early days of the Covid pandemic, tells off snobs who dismiss her predilections for Justin Bieber and strip malls, and offers comedic accounts of every time she's peed herself since reaching middle age. In "What If I Died Like Elvis," she describes making jokes to hospital staff even as anaphylactic shock hampered her ability to breathe, leading her to the realization that she's "a clown who is desperate to coax even a hint of a smile from the very serious people tasked with making sure she lives to honk her big red nose another day." Reflecting on the entertainment she loves, she serves up appreciations for Dave Matthews's love songs and outlines outrageous plot twists she would like to have seen on HBO's Sex and the City. The most moving essay, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" meditates on the bonds of family as she recounts reuniting with her estranged half brother after the death of their father. Bouncing between irreverence and poignancy, this keeps the laughs coming while serving up intimate personal reflection and entertaining cultural commentary. Irby's fans will be glad to find her in top form. (May)

Irby returns with another collection of wide-ranging personal essays. The author, a self-declared fat, sick, and queer comic, comments on everything from her mother's last words to her favorite Dave Matthews Band songs ("People always pretend to be shocked when I say I unabash-edly love Dave Matthews, but…why?"). Irby begins her latest book by telling readers to respond to cultural snobs with the simple declaration, "I like it!" And yes, "the exclamation point is necessary." So begins a sprawling essay collection that humorously celebrates all manner of quirky, even socially unacceptable, behavior, from unapologetically loving the seriously uncool items in the first essay--e.g., Justin Bieber, milk, Trader Joe's, and Instagram--to bickering with her sisters over her mother's deathbed. As in her previous books, Irby delivers a few formally inventive pieces. One chapter, for example, consists mostly of an explanation of the tags on modern porn videos. Another is a list of answers to questions about toilets and bowel movements, while yet another is a "list of the greatest Dave Matthews songs to swoon over." Scatological humor aside, Irby's most successful essays are her most vulnerable, especially the one about losing her mother. At the line level, the author's humor and wordplay positively sizzle, and her chapter titles are characteristically amusing: "I Like To Get High at Night and Think About Whales," "Oh, So You Actually Don't Wanna Make a Show About a Horny Fat Bitch With Diarrhea? Okay!" However, some of the essays carry on too long, bogging readers down in repetitious detail--e.g., an exhaustive list of ways in which Irby would ruin old Sex and the City episodes if she could time travel back to the original writers room. Overall, though, the narrative bursts with the compassion, insight, honesty, and wit that have made Irby a household name. A mostly hilarious book about embracing life's least flattering situations. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.