LITERATURE

Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light: Essays

by Helen Ellis
Knopf. Jul. 2021. 192p. ISBN 9780385546157. $23. HUMOR
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Whether she’s playing poker or second fiddle, Ellis (American Housewife) proves again she is in it to win it, with this essay collection. In stories that will have readers in stitches, she recounts being a reluctant hostage at a friend’s back-alley Botox appointment and chats about cursed Tory Burch sweaters and Roomba-riding cats. Ellis floats effortlessly between hilarity and wholesomeness while comparing menopause to the psychic in Poltergeist, grading her marriage on participation, and casually revealing that the secret ingredient is never love, just mayonnaise. Unpretentious and uplifting, Ellis’s writing on friendship reads more like a conversation you’d have with your best friend than an essay by a stranger.
VERDICT Readers looking for a new literary pal who’s classy enough to wear pearls at the poker table, and brave enough to visit a crowded water park post-menopause, need look no further. Recommend to fans of Nora Ephron and Annabelle Gurwitch.
Reviewed by Alana Quarles, Fairfax County P.L., Alexandria, VA , May 01, 2021
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