Midlife Bites

Jen Mann built a following with her People I Want to Punch in the Throat books, and Midlife Bites brings the same observational humor to the strange middle stretch of life when your kids are getting older, your parents are getting older, and you suddenly notice you are too.

The essays cover marriage at twenty years in, the indignities of perimenopause, friendships that have faded or deepened, and the mental shift that happens when you stop pretending you’re going to become someone different than you already are.

Mann is funny in a specific way. Self-deprecating but not endlessly self-pitying. Sharp without being mean. Honest about her own shortcomings.

Fans of Jenny Lawson or Samantha Irby will find a related sensibility, though Mann is a little less manic and a little more grounded than either.