Wow, No Thank You.: Essays

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Stop what you’re doing and pick up this book. Flip to any page and let Sam Irby make you laugh/cry about adult diapers, disastrous credit scores, and dissatisfying sex. She is one of my all-time favorite writers and Wow, No Thank You may be the best thing I read this year. Recommended By McKenzie W., Powells.com

A new rip-roaring essay collection from the smart, edgy, hilarious, unabashedly raunchy, and bestselling Samantha Irby.

Irby is 40, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin despite what Inspirational Instagram Infographics have promised her. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and has been friendzoned by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife in a Blue town in the middle of a Red state where she now hosts book clubs and makes mason jar salads. This is the bourgeois life of a Hallmark Channel dream. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with “tv executives slash amateur astrologers” while being a “cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person,” “with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees,” who still hides past due bills under her pillow.

The essays in this collection draw on the raw, hilarious particulars of Irby’s new life. Wow, No Thank You is Irby at her most unflinching, riotous, and relatable.

“The only writer who can make me laugh with abandon in public, Samantha Irby follows her breakout collection We Are Never Meeting in Real Life with high-speed treatises on everything from relentless menstruation to ‘raising’ her stepchildren and the stress of making friends in adulthood. Her signature irreverence is intact, of course, but it can’t mask the heart she leaves bleeding on the page.” Julia Kosin, Elle, Best Books of 2020

“Samantha Irby is stay-up-all-night, miss-your-subway-stop, spit-out-your-beverage funny; she’s the king of sparkling misanthropy and tender, loving dread. I await her books like I await the sweet release of sleep each evening. As always, Irby’s writing is as irresistible as a snack tray, as intimately pleasurable as an Irish goodbye.” Jia Tolentino

“A laugh. A fart. A snort. Or some combination thereof. Be prepared to totally lose control of the noises that come out of your body while reading the latest essay collection from humor writer Samantha Irby.” Bustle, *Most Anticipated Books of 2020*

Samantha Irby writes a blog called bitches gotta eat.