Quietly Hostile

by Samantha Irby

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wow, No Thank You

'One of our culture's greatest humorists is back' Glamour

'Brilliant, hilarious and perspicacious' ELIZABETH DAY

'SO funny.' SARA PASCOE

'Wildly, seditiously funny' New York Times

'Sam Irby is the king of sparkling misanthropy and tender, loving dread.' JIA TOLENTINO

This is not an advice book. Samantha Irby doesn't know anything.

After fleeing Chicago to quarantine at home in Michigan, Irby finds herself bleaching groceries and wondering if her upper lip hairs are visible on Zoom. Her career reaches new she gets to work with the iconic ladies of Sex and the City - her dream! - but behind the new-found glam, Irby is just trying to keep her life together. Our friend in print is back, on point, and ready to take us with her, from adopting Abe (her scrawny, watery-eyed firstborn dog) to her favourite, extremely specific porn searches (including two old nuns).

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Humor, Memoir, Audiobook, LGBT, Queer

Audible Audio

First published May 16, 2023

About the author

i'm a slow reader

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sam Irby is brilliant and one of the funniest people I’ve ever read. In many ways this book is quite different from the previous two (not a bad thing). The humor is as sharp and bittersweet. The essays have some different structures, very reminiscent of her excellent blog. As ever I appreciate the insights that come through the humor.

[Traci Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book fits in line with Irby's other books. Funny, depreciating essays with keen observations, but mostly a lot of bodily humor and judgement. Yes, please.

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve been pretty vocal about books that came to fruition during the lockdown portion of the pandemic. Even one of my favorites (Lisa Jewell) stumbled a bit with the very unnecessary The Family Remains (good news is, she has another release coming up this Summer and that one is a banger). When I saw Samantha Irby was getting ready to release her own pandemic offering, I was so there for it. I mean she’s hilarious to begin with so her take on quarantine life was sure to be a winner. Right?

Unfortunately, wrong. I mean there were times when I was like oh yes bish, you are me . . . .

“Quietly hostile is how I would describe my public personality. I am mild-mannered and super polite, but just beneath the surface of my skin, my blood is electrified and I am one inconsiderate driver away from a full Falling Down-style emotional collapse.”

And there were the standard LOLz from stories of a weak bladder (and anal sphincter), a near-death experience via allergic reaction and how delicious a “dip dinner” can be. Buuuuuuuuuut then there was a deep dive into which Dave Matthews songs are her faves and over 20% of the word count spent analyzing porn and breaking down Sex and the City eps . . . .



As someone who still calls it Sex IN the City – I was obviously not the target demographic for any of that. I was also not aware the Irby wrote “The Pool Episode” of Shrill (but I have actually watched it and thought it was the only 100% great one in the first season so kudos to you, Irby). Nor did I know (or really care) that she was a part of the Sex and the City reboot.

I wanted an analysis of the mundane daily motions she went through to make it past Covid – not this.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley!

[Kathleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Did not find Irby’s humor funny. Lots of urination discussion. Spare me!

[emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

samantha irby is the individual to go to if you want a collection of essays packed full of humour, depreciation and observations to match yours. her wit is not for all, but it is sharp, evident here. however, unlike her previous collections, this one, her newest, saw many of them fail to land. the ones that did, on the other hand, were gems. not her best, but enjoyable when good.

- 2.5 stars.

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably shouldn't rate this book as I skimmed a lot of it. I quickly flipped through all the essays about things in which I have zero interest like Sex and the City and the Dave Matthews Band. (Can I really be the only person on the planet who has no idea what he sounds like?)

But, the ones I did read were spot on. Irby is the queen of Too Much Information, and I snickered happily at her woe-filled, yet hilarious tales of indigestion, COVID-19 panic, near death experiences, and porn preferences.

Let's just sum it up by saying that all the essays I did read are rated four stars.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Vintage for letting me read this one.

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a riot!

This is truly uproarious reading experience that sparks joy.

Samantha Irby has written of the most hilarious personal essays that really speak to people who have been shamed for the things they like.

Irby writes about criticizing Sex and the City, her love of Dave Matthews Band, adopting an absolutely wickedly needy pandemic dog.

There are reflections of growing up in the suburbs of the Midwest: of Red Lobsters, strip malls, watching the campy movie “Earth Girls are Easy”, and finally mourning the loss of the KFC Little Bucket Parfait.

I laughed myself till my sides hurt.

[Jordan (Jordy’s Book Club) · Rating 4 out of 5]

QUICK TAKE: loved it. no notes. if you like Irby, you'll like this. nuff said. Audiobook was excellent.

[Cris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a fan of Samantha Irby but this book just didn’t resonate with me this time. Irby always gives stories/essays about her life in her books. This time it was the same but it had a different tone. I didn’t care for the nun story at all, but felt I needed to read it to make an honest review on the book. I just didn’t care for so much negativity towards herself either. The Sex and the City chapter ran on and on and on. I know the title is Quietly Hostile, but Hostile would be better.

[Danielle]

Made it about 75% through and added to my DNF list. 😬

[Melanie Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read all of Samantha Irby’s books and have enjoyed all of the them. This one was more tedious for me to get through, especially the Sex in the City chapter. It was really long. This book also has a LOT of bathroom “humor” which is just not funny to me.

[Brittany · Rating 1 out of 5]

The best part of this book was when it was over. We went from urination on your significant other for sexual pleasure to a play-by-play of nun porn to 33 pages of commentary of specific episodes of Sex & The City. There were a handful of comical moments, but not enough to redeem this dumpster fire. I'm not even sure what the point of this was other than the author likes to talk about herself a lot.

[ainslee :) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m sure this book has a target audience, but I am absolutely not it. There was far too much discussion of various bodily functions (mainly shit, but also piss and vomit), which just isn’t my jam. In general, I also don’t love the overly-casual style of writing, and (I cannot emphasize this enough) how much of the book was taken up by literal poop. It’s just not a sense of humour that I enjoy. All in all, there were maybe two essays that I somewhat enjoyed, and a bunch that I really didn’t care for.

Again, Im sure this book is for someone, but it sure as hell wasn’t for me 🫡🫡

[destiny ♡ howling libraries · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first book of Irby's after having a lot of friends recommend her books to me for years, and I had a pretty good time with it! I definitely feel like I benefited from listening to the audiobook, and if she narrated her other books too, that's the format I'll choose for those as well.

I'm not sure if I would have finished this book if it weren't for Irby's engaging narration. While there were several moments that made me smile or even chuckle a little, they were all at the very beginning of the book, and then most of the following essays kind of lost my interest. I'll most likely check out another of her books to see if it was just an issue with this one, but I was a little let down. I'm hoping it's just an issue with Quietly Hostile because Irby strikes me as the kind of author I want to love, so hopefully the next one will be a better fit for me!

Thank you to the publisher and LibroFM for the audio review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.

✨ Representation: the author is fat, disabled, chronically ill, Black, and queer

✨ Content warnings for: mentions of chronic illness, fatphobia, toxic relationships, kinks, terminal illness, death of parents, COVID

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[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesus. This bitch got me listening to Dave Mathews.

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quietly Hostile is straight-talking comic and essayist Samantha Irby's third collection of witty and relatable stories that immediately have you enraptured. I aimed to read the first few pages only, just to get a flavour of it, but, like any great book, before I knew it, I had been carried away on a rather swift and rather gusty wind of complete relatability, unapologetic stances and laugh-out-loud funny moments all tied neatly into a pretty bow with each page exuding realism, emotion and often biting, acerbic wit.

Drawing from as vast personal subjects as her favourite music, sexual trysts, ongoing health troubles, her complicated family dynamic and the inconvenience and stress of the coronavirus outbreak at the time, each essay is a self-contained gem and a snippet of Irby's life with each having a relatability and pure genuineness that is rarely found within the genre and that resonated with me through to the last page. The liberally interspersed sardonic, self-deprecating humour throughout is a joy to behold and had me racing through the pages which is quite unusual for an essay collection.

However, I wasn't interested in the essay about Sex & the City and going through what she would change about each episode because I don't like or care about the show and going through quite a few of Dave Matthews Band tracks similarly but stating why she likes them in a separate essay also lost my attention slightly after being engrossed up until those points, but, of course, this is all subjective. For me, there was a slight lull in those sections, but in an anthology of topical writings, such as this you, will naturally find some more compulsively readable than others.

That said, Irby is inimitable when she addresses topics of interest as she manages to strike the perfect balance between casual and amusing remarks, openness and honesty, emotion and apathy, light-heartedness and seriousness about her situations, feelings and thoughts. The most hilarious part of the collection in which I could barely contain my exuberant laughter was the essay entitled 'shit happens'. It had me cringing and snorting in equal measure, and in 'o brother, where art thou?' a few tears slipped down my cheek while she discussed the death of her mother which was poignant and emotional.

I can't wait to read more from such a strong, fearless and unique voice; Irby fills these pages with the thoughts many of us are thinking but are often too embarrassed or shy to espouse, and she has the balls to place them in a book! Highly recommended.

[Dona's Books]

Audiobook DNF May 25 2023

Want to reread this as a digital copy.

DNF 22% on June 13 2023

This humor just isn't my style.

[Lamisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think a venn diagram of my sense of humor vs samantha irby's would just be two circles that are as far away from each other as possible. simply did not enjoy or care for most of this but forced myself to finish anyway in the hopes that I would start to like it (I did not). I do appreciate that there is a lot of good stuff here it's just not for me

[Andre(Read-A-Lot) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Irreverent. Sometimes vulgar. Many TMI moments. Often hilarious. Samantha Irby clearly does not mind being self-deprecating and she may be a bit much for some, there was some cringey moments in these pages, but if she can stand it, so can I.

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my favourite Samantha Irby (a couple of these essays didn't actually land for me) but this was still a very funny and occasionally poignant read. My favourite one was "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?", which is about her reconnecting with a half brother she never really knew. Also, her satiric rewriting of all the original Sex and the City episodes was hilarious and especially interesting because she is a writer on the reboot!

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read and loved every single one of Samantha Irby's previous collections. However, while I enjoyed this and read it compulsively, it somehow didn't always work for me. She's still funny and her essays still flow incredibly well but something was missing. The first essay was absolutely brilliant and very much captured how the beginning of the pandemic measures felt like.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samantha Irby is always nothing less than fantastic in my view. That being said, I did prefer her two preceding collections. However, I remain a diehard fan and appreciate her special brand of cynicism, social critique, self-critique, humor, and overall honest confrontation of the challenges of our individual and collective human existence.

[Becca Maree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me set the scene for you: I'm in the car with my partner and our friend. My partner and I tell our friend that we've been listening to an audiobook and would love to continue if they're down for that. Our friend agrees. We start the audiobook at the beginning of a new chapter. We begin our trek. Samantha Irby spends the entire two-hour car ride talking in detail about piss and porn, only one chapter after her listicle of love for her weird, cranky, old dog. 5 stars, no notes.

[Christopher Febles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently took a trip to Vancouver, and rediscovered one of my favorite ways of buying new books: including it with the snacks I buy at Hudson News. Since it’s not the most cost-effective method, I do it when my wife’s not looking. I’m not one for essay collections, but this got recommended to me via GR many times. And it was short enough that I could probably rip through a lot during that grueling red-eye that took off at 11:30 PDT. But I can never sleep on planes, and no, I didn’t wanna turn on the reading light since it shone like the Bat-signal. So I just watched Shrek (the only movie on offer I could tolerate) on mute with my hands cupping the screen.



Good thing I didn’t get to much of this during the flight, however, since it was laugh-out-loud funny. Even though the whole thing could be a trigger warning, what with passages about bodily functions and porn, I lost my breath a few times with loud guffaws. Samantha Irby writes in a direct and relatable tone, much as you might hear from a friend talking smack over a few beers at the local dive bar.

Her take on being 40+ in today’s culture is just delightful. I ended up taking pictures of pages I loved (will I get sued for that?) just so I could read the passages again and again. I should say that my daughter looks at me funny when I wonder stupid things out loud…which is just the kind of stuff she describes. So, I burst out laughing whenever she suggested something unusual, like her love of QVC, a bachelorette party at Red Lobster, or the time the store on her book tour GOT ROBBED during her talk…and they told her to just keep going. Her views on teens don’t exactly line up with my own, but thinking about that made me smile. And no, I’d never try to dress like them or talk like them; if you’re over 35 (a mile marker I passed like six states ago) you should know that.

She’s a TV writer, so she lost me almost completely with her 30-page chapter on Sex and the City. I kinda just read politely and waited for something funny I’d understand, kinda like what I did for 80% of my high school exchange to Spain. Overall, there’s a lot of TV stuff here that went over my head, but the humor is universal. Also, get ready for some long, LONG sentences. Imagine William Faulkner wearing a wife-beater stained with spaghetti sauce using all 2200 IG characters to describe how stupid Aaron Boone is. That said, Irby is much easier and funnier to read.



Also: what the HELL with the Cheesecake Factory? She waits three hours to order reheated Ronzoni smothered in salt and butter that you can’t see anyway under the one-watt lighting? And I’m sorry: the cheesecake isn’t that great. My review: glorified, overpriced Applebee’s. (Come at me, folks…since it means you gotta come to Brooklyn and get some REAL food.) Rax King, are you listening? (Yes, I got Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer vibes from this…)

In general, Irby is someone I’d love to meet. Her personality shines through her writing and I enjoyed it immensely. I’d probably just wince and nod if she described bowl movements during our time together, but I’m sure there’d be something funny there. DEFINITELY NSFW, however, so don’t whip it out and read passages out loud in front of your 10-year old (I didn’t, I swear). The content will get this sucker banned like a MF in several states…which is only one of many reasons why you should get it. Nicely done!

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any book Samantha Irby puts out is an auto-read for me, because I know I will be laughing at all of the marvelously relatable cringe encased within its contents. Quietly Hostile is, naturally, a hilarious and binge-able collection of essays, with enough unapolagetic wit to give you rock-hard abs in no time from busting a gut as you read it. If you also frequently waver between being very anxious and very badass, you will delight in Irby's writing and way with words.

[Hannah Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another laugh-out-loud-until-I-cried banger by Samantha Irby. This is my second read by Irby and I cannot get enough. She is so effortlessly funny and engrained in wit, and it truly shows in each of her essays. What I also love about Irby is she can make the most simplistic topic so interesting to have a conversation about. She’s relevant, fresh and relatable. Five stars all the way.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave We Are Never Meeting in Real Life 3.5 stars rounded down, but this one gets the full four stars because there's something about Samantha Irby as she gets older and somehow more self-indulgent yet anxious and overthinking about everything that really appeals to me. She likes what she likes and dislikes loudly what she dislikes, and she will tell you all about it. Also, she somehow leans even harder into her seemingly no-shame descriptions of bodily-functions and -mishaps that she believes with all her heart nobody else should have shame about either. The part where she describes herself as a trash goblin running around in her house scooping up evidence of her behavior while her family is gone (i.e. multiple unfinished Starbucks cups, days old) is very key to understanding the persona she's presenting here. Also it made me laugh.

If there was anything she was holding back, I kind of don't want to know.

Memorable moments for me:

* "This book is dedicated to Zoloft."
* The entire "I like it!" essay. A phrase she uses now to disarm shitty people who want to shit on things she likes to make her feel inferior. I'm going to start doing this.
* Her inexplicable love for Dave Matthews Band. She really likes that dude.
* The chapter where she describes her favorite porno, and then has an unexpected reaction to actually watching the whole thing instead of skipping to the sex bits.
* Her weird dog.
* The chapter where she rewrites Sex and the City episodes from the original series (she worked on the new one). I only ever saw a season of this show but this essay was still fantastically entertaining.
* Her near death experience, involving gel nail polish and anaphylaxis.

Anyway, a fun time! I meant to read Wow! No Thank You. before starting this but never got around to it. Should really do that sooner rather than later as I think it focuses on her new marriage and becoming a stepmother, something she only touches on briefly in this book.

[kelseyandherbooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is this my favourite Samantha Irby essay collection? I say that every time I finish one, but I’m happy for Quietly Hostile to hold that place until we are gifted another one.

“I Like It” was probably my favourite essay of the bunch, because loving things loudly and unapologetically is my love language.

I resonated with her take on marriage in “My Firstborn Dog” - I like normalizing that couples who have been together for a very long time might run out of things to say sometimes!!!

But the one that had me snorting with laughter the most? “What If I Died like Elvis.” I was walking my dog and thank god no one else was around, because I probably sounded clinically insane. When she “hee-haws” as she’s talking about her attempts to talk to hospital personnel?? I lost it.

I am so grateful to Libro.fm for the gifted ALC and can’t wait to hold my preordering physical copy in my hands at the end of the month!!

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Annnnnd that's another fabulous essay collection by Samantha Irby under my belt! Considering I'm a long-time subscriber of her newsletter and I've watched shows she's written for, it's safe to say I'm a fan.

You never know what you're gonna get from a Samantha Irby essay, and as always, these ran the gamut. All of them were strong, but some were stronger than others (as it goes for the vast majority of essay collections!); I particularly loved her writing on Dave Matthews and Sex and the City as well as her ruminations on her complicated family history.

God, some of the ways she phrases mundane parts of life just live rent-free in my mind for months at a time. She has a gift!

Content warning: Mentions of parental death and grief

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 4 out of 5]

In which I look at this cover and go, "Sam, we are the same person?"

Because damn.