
Wow, No Thank You.
“What Keats did for the ode, Irby has done for the complaint: Anything, it seems, can be worthy of this essayist and blogger’s lavish, hilarious scorn, brought to life here in the audiobook version of her latest essays, narrated by Irby her self.”
New York Times Book Review (audio review)
A Bustle Pick of Most Anticipated Books of 2020
A Time Magazine Pick of the Month
A London Observer Pick of Spring's Best Books
A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of Audiobooks
A Pop Sugar Pick of Spring's Best Books
A BuzzFeed Books Pick of Audiobooks Better Than the Print Version
BookPage Best Book of the Year
Elle Magazine Pick of Best Books of 2020
Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
Winner of Lambda Literary Award, 2021
Winner of Lambda Literary Award, 2021
Winner of Lambda Literary Award, 2021
Winner of Lambda Literary Award, 2021
Irby is forty, 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.
Praise
