Jessi Klein

I started reading this and said "Oh no" out loud at the first essay. Klein is simply not my kind of person at all. She's an immensely privileged Nice White Lady. She's the kind of Angeleno who is always talking about she's REALLY a New Yorker and New York is the BEST city, it's just so different from all the other cities, honestly how do people even SURVIVE outside of New York? Bodegas! People! Walking! She unironically loved Eat, Pray, Love. (Look, I know hating that book has become a show more cliche, but I read it when it came out and I've been hating it this whole time. I feel my loathing should be grandfathered in, basically.) She had never heard of the hero's journey until she listened to a podcast. We are not the same.

But I am sick, and as a result I'm burning through books faster than the library can provide them, so I gave this a try. And the thing is, I did enjoy it. Klein has had a very different experience of motherhood than I have -- much more supported (live in nanny AND night nurse, wtf) and yet somehow much, much harder and more miserable. But she does manage to observe things about motherhood that are real and true, and she did manage to make me laugh several times. (Which was much appreciated, because again: I read this while horribly sick.) And at the end of the day, a book that makes me laugh like that gets four stars.

Warning, though: this is one of those "heterosexuality is a hell of a drug" memoirs. (Yes, I know she said she might be a little bit queer. Maybe she is! Only she can know. But her marriage is undeniably a very, very heterosexual one. So many gender roles! So much misery as a result! It's telling, I think, that she seems to believe that love and respect and balance and caring can only happen in a queer relationship.) show less

DNF:

A good many memoirs are completely effective without the reader needing to connect with or like the narrator. But for You'll Grow Out of It, I found myself struggling with the book precisely because I felt so alienated from the narrator. The book's back material talks a lot about Klein being a tomboy as a child, and the first essay or so discuss her confusion about what it was to be feminine and whether she wanted to be that/why it didn't feel "natural" to her to perform femininity. And show more I thought, "Cool, this is going to be a funny, relatable discussion of being a woman in 21st century America, and how we sometimes feel at odds with what that's supposed to mean even while still wanting to do it 'right.'" And then it just kind of went off the rails for me. The funny bits seemed way more dark or depressing or mean than funny. And as Klein moved on from discussing her childhood, a lot of statements (that I guess were supposed to be funny?) started creeping in that undermine the idea that we can pick and choose which bits of femininity feel right to each of us (or reject them all) and that's fine and good and right. At one point, while discussing buying really expensive makeup, she says, "This despite the fact that I. . . still have trouble buying socks that don't come in a bag because I just can't believe a singe pair costs more than six bucks" (p. 31). There's some implication in there that there's something wrong with buying socks that way, that the "feminine" thing (or adult thing?) to do is definitely not buying the kinds of socks that come six to a pack. And the thing is just peppered with these little "funny" moments that make it clear what behaviors are doing it wrong. She makes a similar comment at some point about the time when she was still wearing cotton underwear and not grooming her lady bits. Like becoming an adult women means, you, what, wear silk next to the skin and get waxed twice a month? I mean, come on. Femininity is a complicated subject, yes, and it means different things to different people and what some of us would never be caught dead doing is something others of us couldn't imagine leaving the house without having done. I thought that's what this book was going to be about. Maybe it gets there? But to the point I got (~87 pages in), I was done with the assumptions about the "right" ways to do things and the urg feeling the book was giving me. YMMV. show less

I believe I first became aware of Ms. Klein when she would appear on Best Week Ever. I loved that show. I have always been someone who goes to be early, so I would miss the first airing on Friday nights, and (if I’m remembering it correctly) catch the weekend rerun. Because when you go to bed early on Friday, you obviously are up in time to watch a show at 9AM on Saturday.

I also recall squealing a bit when I saw Ms. Klein briefly on camera during Inside Amy Schumer. So when I learned she show more had a book out – obviously I was going to buy it.

This book is delightful. I might use that word a bit too much, but I don’t care, because that’s the perfect word to describe this book. It’s funny. It’s sweet but not sickeningly so. It feels intimate and honest but I didn’t read anything where I thought was over the top. Above all, I found it to be extremely relatable. Not because I, too, am an Emmy-award winning writer and comedian. But because the stories she tells can connect back to feelings that I think a lot of us have had.

Like that moment where you can almost observe yourself doing the absolutely wrong thing when it comes to an ex? (If you don’t have at least one of those moments, I’d love to know your secret but also, I’m kind of wondering if you’re a cyborg.) Or perhaps the moment when, just for maybe a few hours, or a weekend, you decide to go totally sincere, and just enjoy an experience without letting your cynical side take over completely. Look, she goes to what is essentially a fancy hippie spa, and has a moment, and even though I will never go to said fancy hippie spa, the feelings Ms. Klein is able to share through her exquisite writing transcend the environment and get to the soul of the emotions.

But, again, there’s also a ton of humor. Every chapter – including the final one that deals with infertility – is full of clever asides or one-liners that effortlessly raise the tone. And the footnotes! Ah, I love a good footnote, and this book is full of them.

So go! Reserve your copy at the library, or download it, or, my preference, buy a copy and read it and then gift it to a friend. show less

*I received a copy of this book through the publisher.*

Jessi Klein is clearly a gifted comedian and presents her story with sharp humor and lively stories about being a woman in a confusing era. I wasn't certain I would enjoy this book, as Jessi Klein admits to being a tomboy earlier on and I have always been a rather girly girl, but this book is easy to relate to and I would recommend it to any young woman.