I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood (Harper)
The eagerly anticipated second essay collection from Jessi Klein, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestselling debut You’ll Grow Out of It.
“Sometimes I think about how much bad news there is to tell my kid, the endlessly long, looping CVS receipt scroll of truly terrible things that have happened, and I want to get under the bed and never come out. How do we tell them about all this? Can we just play Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire and then brace for questions? The first of which should be, how is this a song that played on the radio?”
In New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Jessi Klein’s second collection, she hilariously explodes the cultural myths and impossible expectations around motherhood and explore the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife.
In interconnected essays like “Listening to Beyoncé in the Parking Lot of Party City,” “Your Husband Will Remarry Five Minutes After You Die,” “Eulogy for My Feet,” and “An Open Love Letter to Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent,” Klein explores this stage of life in all its cruel ironies, joyous moments, and bittersweetness.
Written with Klein’s signature candor and humanity, I'll Show Myself Out is an incisive, moving, and often uproarious collection.
Jessi Klein is the author of the New York Times bestseller You’ll Grow Out of It and the Emmy and Peabody award-winning head writer and an executive producer of Comedy Central's critically acclaimed series Inside Amy Schumer. She is the showrunner and an executive producer on the upcoming Showtime comedy “I Love That For You,” starring Vanessa Bayer, Molly Shannon and Jenifer Lewis and is an actor and consulting producer on the hit Netflix show Big Mouth. Jessi has also written for Netflix’s Dead to Me and Amazon's Transparent as well as Saturday Night Live. She has been featured on the popular storytelling series The Moth, and has been a regular panelist on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Her work has been published in the New York Times, the New Yorker, GQ, and Cosmopolitan, and she has her own half-hour Comedy Central stand-up special. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.
Casey Wilson is an actress, writer, director, and podcaster. She stars in Showtime’s Black Monday, and her credits include the HBO series Mrs. Fletcher, and the sitcoms Marry Me, based on her life, and the cult hit Happy Endings. She was also a featured player on Saturday Night Live for two seasons. Casey has also been featured in: Gone Girl, Julie & Julia, For Your Consideration, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Atypical, One Mississippi, The Disaster Artist, Black-ish, Always Be My Maybe, and The Shrink Next Door. She co-hosts the hit podcast Bitch Sesh, which was a 2019 People’s Choice Award nominee. Casey co-wrote and co-starred in the movies Bride Wars and Ass Backwards with her longtime collaborator and best friend June Diane Raphael. Her directorial debut, Daddio, premiered at SWSW and TIFF. Casey lives with her husband and two sons in Los Angeles.
Praise for I'll Show Myself Out -
“Jessi Klein has yet again ‘delivered’ (and yes I’m using that in the messy motherhood-pun way—I’m not the writer) a collection of the most relatable, achingly raw, and stunningly human essays I have read about the mess of motherhood and this chapter of life since her last collection. And… they are of course hilarious. THANK YOU JESSI for this gift. Please read it, mothers. It is nourishment.” — Kathryn Hahn
“Jessi Klein’s essay collection spoke to the deepest part of my soul and being. Her framing of motherhood as a ‘hero’s journey’ made me weep from feeling seen. I also howled with laughter so many times I was politely asked to leave a restaurant. It’s a perfect book.” — Casey Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of The Wreckage of My Presence
“I'll Show Myself Out is so pee-in-the-pants funny, I made sure to wear period underwear while reading it. Insanely smart and wildly relatable, Jessi Klein's highly anticipated second book is the most entertaining thing I've read in a long time.” — Ali Wong, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Girls
“A bold and irreverent collection. . . . Klein is full of surprises, and moments of hilarity often dissolve into unexpected glimpses of joy. . . . Funny, clever, and full of heart, this one’s a gem.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
