This book is dedicated to the kid Maurice in my US history class my junior year who called me a fucking idiot. lol bruh
I was not overly enamored by Samantha Irby’s We Are Never Meeting in Real Life but I was looking for a breezy memoir to listen to following a string of serious books and Meaty was available for immediate download off Overdrive. Plus my sister stans hard for Irby so I felt obligated to give her another shot. I will say I vastly preferred her debut Meaty over her sophomore follow up and perhaps would have more enjoyed Real Life if I’d read them chronologically.
Irby had a rough upbringing; she was the planned baby of a 40-year-old woman with MS and 50 year old alcoholic man. Her parents separated when she was young and she lived with her mother, eventually being the parent as her mother’s disease progressed. Eventually Irby’s mother was sent to a nursing home and in Samantha’s early twenties both her parents passed away within a year of one another. Rough stuff for sure, but luckily Samantha has a sense of humor about her upbringing which she presents to you through a series of essays that include spending her first co-ed party watching Wheel of Fortune with her friend’s mother.
If a difficult childhood wasn’t enough to garner sympathy (and material), Samantha also suffers from Chron’s Disease. Her essays detailing her struggle with the incurable disease were some of the more interesting in the collection. She is also very Liz Lemony in her approach to sex and relationships which I tend to appreciate in my female protagonists.
“Every time I see a Cialis commercial I think, ‘Oh my fucking GOD, I bet the last thing that old broad wants to do is wait for that old dude to finish raking those leaves while his boner pill kicks in.’”
Overall Meaty has redeemed Samantha Irby in my eyes and while I most like won’t seek out We Are Never Meeting in Real Life again if she writes a third collection of essays I might just pick it up,.