We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Essays

If I didn’t have things to do, I probably would have finished reading Samantha Irby’s second book, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Essays, in two days or less. I was attracted to the book for superficial reasons: a cat is on the cover, and a black woman wrote it. I do think that you have to be grown to read it since it immediately starts with adult humor, but if you are not interested in bawdy humor, she plumbs into more substantial life turning points and quotidian fare rather quickly.
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Essays is extremely relatable in the way that Irby openly confesses her thought processes on food, work, leisure and relationships. It feels like the essays are presented in chronological order because you vicariously experience when she is suddenly in a serious relationship and how it progresses so suddenly a collection of essays on various humorous topics segues into a deconstructed memoir by a normal woman capable of extraordinary wit that can capture the mood of living in postmodern Midwest America.
When I classify Irby as a normal woman, I mean that if you are reading her book, it is not because she is famous for doing something such as being on tv or in a movie or saving someone’s life. What makes We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Essays worth reading is her humor, but normal does not mean average. She has many personal characteristics and life experiences that most people do not: various physical and mental ailments, the composition of her immediate family, her sexuality. It never feels like Irby is auditioning for the oppression Olympics. She just describes life as she lives it, complete with an internal dialogue that is so strikingly familiar that it feels like she was reading my mind, and therein lies what makes her distinctive: the ability to articulate the moments that we never witness objectively because they unfold inside us.
As I was nearing the end of the book, I immediately requested her first book, Meaty: Essays, which has a rooster on the cover. When I run out of her books, I’ll probably have to visit her website, bitchesgottoeat.com.