Lifeform

By: Jenny Slate

Narrated by: Jenny Slate, George Saunders, Vanessa Bayer, Will Forte

From actor, comedian, co-creator of Marcel the Shell, and New York Times bestselling author of Little Weirds, Jenny Slate, a wild, soulful, hilarious collection of genre-bending essays depicting the journey into motherhood as you’ve never seen it before.

What happened was this: Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and in that period there was a deep dark loneliness that she had to face and befriend, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, and in that period she was like chimes, or a flock of clean breaths, and her spine lying flat was the many-colored planks on the xylophone, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love, because of past injury. And then what happened was that she became a wild-pregnant-mammal-thing and then she exploded herself by having a whole baby blast through her vagina during a global plague and then she was expected to carry on like everything was normal—but was this normal, and had she or anything ever been normal?

Herein lies an account of this journey, told in five phases—Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby, and Ongoing—through luminous, laugh-out-loud funny, unclassifiable essays that take the form of letters to a doctor, dreams of a stork, fantasy therapy sessions, gossip between racoons, excerpts from an imaginary olden timey play, obituaries, theories about post-partum hair loss, graduation speeches, and more.

No one writes like Jenny Slate.

This is the neurotic musings of a woman in the Wreck it Ralph characters voice Vanellope von Schweetz.

There is a story within this narrative but the tone it takes is an endless stream of consciousness: this struck me as rambling with consistent mentions of vagina, anus and lots of other inappropriate things. I actually stuck the entire story out and the last thirty minutes was decent when she was considering her dying grandmother and the future she held within her belly that would continue her grandmother's bloodline. This made me suspect that the author might consider a more serious book in the future because the tone was completely different at that point and rather than coming across as neurotic the things mentioned made me think about life and death which the author did an excellent job considering. Some might like this book but be prepared for swinging comparisons with zany thoughts and a heavy dose of indecent humor.

Not for me

After seeing the author on TV, the writing was more authentic and her person was more understandable.

Jenny Slate is a national treasure!

I esp the letters to the OB that Jenny wrote during and after her pregnancy. I love this author and, as a general matter, anywho who can embrace and LOvE and find humour in their own beautiful neurotic human-ness!!!! 5 stars!!!

This Book Rules

I loved Little Weirds, so I bought this as soon as I saw it was out. It did not disappoint. Jenny Slate gives me hope for weirdness yet in the publishing world. Thanks!

Quirky way to tell her story. For unique listeners.

Jenny is a great performer but I couldn’t tell if she was performing her own story or someone elses’. The vibe feels like a stage performance of a collection of stories rather than audiobook. I found that frustrating while also fascinating. I mostly loved the stories about her pregnancy and love for her baby long before the baby was born, as well as her grandmother.