[Klein] writes with a singularity so amusing and compelling that I feel the urge to connect her in my mind to other funny writers I’ve read ... Her witty, conversational prose is sharp-eyed and loud with a feminist emphasis that feels fresh ... Klein, in the manner of a well-trained therapy-advanced gen-x New York Jew, determinedly investigates her own vulnerabilities and reflections. Deep and scrutinizing, she twists her way through her psyche like she might endlessly twirl a lock of spitty hair.
You’ll Grow Out of It comes along to remind us just what an artful confessional essay can do ... These pieces often have a let-me-level-with-you directness reminiscent of [Nora] Ephron without being too imitative ... The jokiness, digressions, confessions and punctuation in lieu of words (!!!) are counterbalanced by thoughtful insights and genuine emotion ... This is a book about accepting one’s flaws, and it’s not without a few of them. The deeper the topic — heartbreak, marriage, career struggles — the more monotonous the telling...The other issue is that too many essays end on a note of pat summary.
...as she does in the 'tom man' essay and almost every other piece in the book, Klein ends a few sentences after arriving at the main point, leaving me with no answers to all the questions she just raised, only a new way to identify myself ... It's like the beginning of a beautiful all-day Gchat conversation. On a sentence level, her writing is hilarious and smart, sometimes even brilliant. But the underlying feature of the book as a whole is laziness, as though Klein squeezed in writing the chapters between her many other responsibilities.
...[a] highly enjoyable and hilarious debut collection ... Klein does a particularly good job of describing how contradictory it can feel to live as a woman who recognizes the ridiculousness of traditional feminine ideals yet still wants to fulfill them ... One can almost hear her voice dipping down at the end of shorter pieces, wrapping things up neatly to arrive at an easy-to-digest significance. While those tidy endings and shortcuts to meaning might be more forgivable in a live medium, here they make some pieces seem abrupt, ending just as they start to get somewhere really good. Which is too bad, because Klein is fun, intelligent, fiercely observant, and hilarious.
