Reviews with content warning for Chronic illness - Meaty

So, at first I liked this book a lot. I found the essays funny, relatable, and very honest. I like their variety, I like the ones that are basically list poems, etc.

But I liked it less and less the longer it went on. A lot of the humor felt repetitive--like, I can only read so much about making fun of the all the men she's been with before I get tired of it. By the end I was pretty uninterested and just waiting for it to be over.

I did read the first edition, and she re-ordered the essays for the later editions. Maybe the new order would have kept my interest more. But idk, I just felt like some of the essays were doing/saying the same things as previous ones, and it wasn't funny enough for that to be worth it.

Also there were some things that have not aged well--lots of fatphobia and internalized fatphobia, as well as internalized sexism. Also some things about the environment that I don't feel like she would say ten years later--at least, I hope not.

Anyway I'm giving this four stars because I did like it for a while, and I'm trying not to let my "meh" feelings at the end change my whole thoughts on the book. I don't think I'd recommend it, but maybe I'd try reading some of her later books.

Update: I changed this to 3.25 stars. I was trying to not let the parts I didn't like affect my rating too much, but the more time passes the less I think I'd recommend this. I did like a couple essays and I didn't hate this book or anything, but I no longer think I'd try reading some of her later books even. Just not for me.

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notartgarfunkel's review against another edition

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funny reflective medium-paced

4.0

With Samantha Irby’s new essay collection coming out this year, I’m finally prioritizing her earlier work. Meaty is her first book of essays, published in 2013 and updated in 2018.

As indicated by the title, one connection between these essays is Irby’s lived experience of her body. She discusses sex, chronic illness, race, fatness, mental health, and gender, among other things. There are also accounts of her mother’s illness and death. I really appreciate Irby’s irreverent approach to these hard topics. I laughed a lot, but I was also struck by how much she has had to survive.

Some of these essays were hard for me to read (thanks, OCD!), but I’m glad I did. I can’t wait to get to her later collections and see how her life and writing have changed. She’s a real gem.

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abbie_'s review against another edition

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funny lighthearted fast-paced

3.25

I really liked all the frank discussion about sex and Crohn's disease (all the reviews I've seen mention the amount of poop talk, but I still don't think I was prepared for the amount of poop talk!), but other parts of this collection felt very of its time, i.e. 2013. That's the trouble with books that are meant to be funny, humour is very subjective to its time. Like in 2013, everyone was saying 'interwebs' and 'oh noes' and it was fine (I guess) but reading it almost 10 years later feels a bit cringey.

I know Irby also later came out as bisexual, and I'm not sure where she was in her journey when she wrote this, but there's some talk of wanting to 'decide to like women from now on' after bad experiences with men, which didn't sit right with me. Obviously now I know Irby is actually bisexual, but from what I can gather in this collection, she was still identifying (publicly) as straight. Hopefully the whole rhetoric of 'choosing to like women because men are trash' thing is also something we've left behind in 2013, and obviously Irby came to terms with her sexuality later on which is great!

But overall, a good collection that made me exhale through my nose many times and even laugh out loud once or twice! Will definitely read her later collections too.

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