Ill Show Myself Out Essays on

An instant New York Times bestseller, I'll Show Myself Out is the eagerly anticipated second essay collection from Jessi Klein, author of the acclaimed debut You’ll Grow Out of It.

Longlisted for the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

“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.

This is motherhood, told with the volume turned all the way up:

• The Hero’s Journey of Motherhood: The quest for toddler cookies becomes a profound, hilarious exploration of what it means to be a modern-day hero—even if the journey is just to the supermarket.
• Midlife Crisis Humor: From listening to Beyoncé in the Party City parking lot to eulogizing her own feet, Klein navigates the indignities and surprising joys of being a woman of a certain age.
• Postpartum Realities: An unsparingly funny look at the parts of childbirth no one warns you about, from the horror of potty-training in a public restroom to the invention of the ‘underwear sandwich.’
• Marriage and Family Humor: Featuring laugh-out-loud fantasies about a future lesbian wife and the startling realization that your husband will remarry five minutes after you die.