How to Leave: Quitting the City and Coping with a New Reality

by Erin Clune

Overview

An uproarious memoir and guide to leaving the big city

So you escaped whatever humdrum little town you grew up in and moved to The Big City. Maybe it was New York. Maybe it was Seattle or Kansas City. Wherever it was, there was amazing stuff everywhere you turned: Ethiopian food! A movie theater that played documentaries! A hairstylist who knew what to do with frizz! You overlooked the crime rates (edgy!), the proximity of your kitchen to your bed (convenient!), and the fact that you had to take public transportation to see nature, then had to share it with millions of other cranky, naked mole-rat apartment dwellers (urban!).

But then you got a job offer you couldn't refuse. Or you developed asthma. Or you got pregnant. Or you got pregnant for the second time and you couldn't use your closet as a bedroom for two babies. And you decided you had to leave.

When Frank Sinatra and Alicia Keys said that if you could make it in New York, you could make it anywhere, they probably weren't talking about the middle of nowhere or whatever suburb you used to make fun of. Because "making it" is really hard to do without world-class museums and gourmet food trucks. Erin Clune regales readers with priceless stories of her own experiences leaving New York for her hometown in Wisconsin, and provides a jocular but useful guide--for anyone leaving, or thinking about leaving, their own personal mecca--to finding contentment while staying true to yourself in a place far, far away from The City.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632868565
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	10/09/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	691 KB

About the Author

Erin Clune is a journalist and comedic writer whose work is regularly featured on NPR's All Things Considered, PRI's To the Best of Our Knowledge, and in Medium, The Rumpus, and many other media outlets where information meets funny. She is also the co-author (along with Today show producers Alicia Ybarbo and Mary Ann Zoellner) of Sh*tty Mom for All Seasons. Clune lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with two kids, two cats, one husband, one guinea pig, and zero doormen.

Editorial Reviews

05/21/2018
Comedic writer Clune shares her experience of moving from Manhattan back to her hometown of Madison, Wis., in this clever and amusing memoir–cum–“practical coping guide.” Clune divides the book into four parts: “Deciding to Go,” “Settling In,” “Learning to Adapt,” and “Mastery,” with chapters describing her transition from New Yorker to Midwesterner. For her, the “tipping factor” in deciding to move after 20 years of living in the city was when her first child entered kindergarten, and she and her lawyer husband decided it would be easier to relocate to a more family-friendly environment and enroll the kids in public school. Clune soon misses fresh shellfish, chance encounters with celebrities, and other Manhattan perks, and finds that her irreverent, sarcastic communication mode doesn’t work so well in the Midwest, where one should not indiscriminately “drop the f-bomb.” She advises her readers to resist the urge to be “judgy,” to curse, or to complain after a move, for there is “no perfect place.” Clune’s helpful narrative is peppered with entertaining anecdotes and humorous asides (“It also became apparent during that first year that my friends from New York were never going to visit”) along with such sagacious observations as “moving is a process, not an event.” This is a hilarious and comforting book for the recently relocated. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Clever and amusing . . . Clune's helpful narrative is peppered with entertaining anecdotes and humorous asides . . . This is a hilarious and comforting book for the recently relocated.” —Publishers Weekly

“From the passive-aggressive code of the Midwestern 'I'm sorry' to the challenges of learning the local food culture, Clune walks through the four stages of relocation shock (and the many setbacks along the way) with the humor, empathy, and helpfulness of a good friend.” —Booklist

“A wry debut by a humorist and journalist that combines memoir with tongue-in-check self-help . . . Even readers with no intention of uprooting their lives will likely be amused by Clune's low-key and relatable adventures.” —Kirkus Reviews

"This hilarious memoir will resonate with anyone who's ever left the hustle and bustle of city life for a more quiet existence." - Real Simple, “Best Books of 2018”

"Clune's real strength is her nuanced understanding of the mixed emotions that go along with fumbled attempts to reestablish oneself in a new place. She has solid advice for making new friends and gives space to grieve friendships lost in the process . . . Relocating is difficult, but Erin Clune's humorous advice can make that transition a little easier." - Shelf Awareness

"How to Leave is destined to be turned into a network TV sitcom. Or at least it should be. I hope that Amy Poehler reads the book and realizes that she’d make a perfect Erin Clune." - Inside Higher Ed

"Sardonic and self-deprecating . . . it offers relatable observations and practical coping mechanisms for a very first-world prognosis." - The Sunday Times’ Style magazine (UK)

From the Publisher

2018-09-02

A wry debut by a humorist and journalist that combines memoir with tongue-in-check self-help.

The book is set up as a guide for those who want to leave the coastal cities where they have established their careers for smaller and cheaper towns in mid-America. Clune (co-author: Sh*tty Mom for All Seasons: Half-@ssing It All Year Long, 2016, etc.) left New York City for her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, once she was married and had two young kids and, not coincidentally, was faced with the horrifying prospect of paying private school tuition for them. While the author's insights into New York ("a people-watching paradise, with absorbing human dramas everywhere you look") and the Midwest (which has "a preponderance of three things: snow, alcohol, and white people") are more predictable than surprising, her self-deprecating persona has its charms. Her pleasure with the newfound benefits of suburban living ("in Wisconsin, we could do the laundry whenever it was dirty") is evident, though some may find her taste for four-letter words less enchanting. Clune has a gift for quirky and thought-provoking overstatements ("nobody in America considers moving without, at some point, looking at Seattle") and telling details: After she moved to Madison, she writes, "the number of weekly conversations we had about quilting went from zero to five." The author divides the book into four sections, dedicated to "deciding to go," "settling in," "learning to adapt," and "mastery." Sandwiched among the snarky observations on food in the Midwest, where "the two main cooking seasons are grilling and Crock-Pot," and rants about some of her pet peeves, which include Target and gratitude journals, are some useful bits of advice for those contemplating or engaged in a major move. "I do sincerely hope that before you move," she writes, "you'll say good-bye to all of those baggy, ripped undies you've held on to for years 'just in case.' "

Even readers with no intention of uprooting their lives will likely be amused by Clune's low-key and relatable adventures.

Kirkus Reviews