Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby

 

Do you like reading essays or short stories?  What are some favorites?

I started off greatly enjoy Samantha Irby’s Quietly Hostile.  It’s a series of essays that delve into her life and experiences.  I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard reading a book of essays.  Her stories were brutally honest and hit home with me on so many levels.

Then the essays fell off a cliff for me.  She had a very strange one that delved into too much detail on the kind of porn she likes to watch.  I don’t really care what she likes to watch and I don’t need to read the details.  I skipped the rest of that essay, but the next essay was a detailed summary of all of the seasons of Sex in the City.  I enjoyed that show twenty years ago, but I’m not so much of a super fan that I even remembered what was being talked about in these vignettes.  She is a writer on the new series, so it was interesting from that perspective.

I just got stuck in the middle of this for two months.  I picked it back up again and the rest were enjoyable, although not at the level of the very beginning of the book.  I especially liked her essay on trying to get a TV show going on the fictionalized version of her life.  It was fun to get the behind-the-scenes perspective on this.

I also enjoyed that Samantha Irby lives in Kalamazoo Michigan and had some local stories as well.  I was born in Kalamazoo and grew up not far from there.

Book Source: Review Copy from NetGalley.   Thank-you! Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.