Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and you too!

by Chelsea Handler

Overview

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The funny, sad, super-honest, all-true story of Chelsea Handler’s year of self-discovery—featuring a nerdily brilliant psychiatrist, a shaman, four Chow Chows, some well-placed security cameras, various family members (living and departed), friends, assistants, and a lot of edibles

A SKIMM READS PICK • “This will be one of your favorite books of all time.”—Amy Schumer

In a haze of vape smoke on a rare windy night in L.A. in the fall of 2016, Chelsea Handler daydreams about what life will be like with a woman in the White House. And then Donald Trump happens. In a torpor of despair, she decides that she’s had enough of the privileged bubble she’s lived in—a bubble within a bubble—and that it’s time to make some changes, both in her personal life and in the world at large.

At home, she embarks on a year of self-sufficiency—learning how to work the remote, how to pick up dog shit, where to find the toaster. She meets her match in an earnest, brainy psychiatrist and enters into therapy, prepared to do the heavy lifting required to look within and make sense of a childhood marked by love and loss and to figure out why people are afraid of her. She becomes politically active—finding her voice as an advocate for change, having difficult conversations, and energizing her base. In the process, she develops a healthy fixation on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and, through unflinching self-reflection and psychological excavation, unearths some glittering truths that light up the road ahead. 

Thrillingly honest, insightful, and deeply, darkly funny, Chelsea Handler’s memoir keeps readers laughing, even as it inspires us to look within and ask ourselves what really matters in our own lives.

Praise for Life Will Be the Death of Me

“You thought you knew Chelsea Handler—and she thought she knew herself—but in her new book, she discovers that true progress lies in the direction we haven’t been.”—Gloria Steinem 

“I always wondered what it would be like to watch Chelsea Handler in session with her therapist. Now I know.”—Ellen DeGeneres

“I love this book not just because it made me laugh or because I learned that I feel the same way about certain people in politics as Chelsea does. I love this book because I feel like I finally really got to know Chelsea Handler after all these years. Thank you for sharing, Chelsea!”—Tiffany Haddish

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525511779
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/09/2019
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Chelsea Handler is a writer, comedian, producer, TV host, activist, and the author of five consecutive New York Times bestsellers. She hosted the late-night talk show Chelsea Lately on the E! network from 2007 to 2014 and released a documentary series, Chelsea Does, on Netflix in January 2016. In 2016 and 2017, Handler hosted the talk show Chelsea on Netflix. She is at work on a documentary about white privilege that will be released by Netflix in 2019.

Read an Excerpt

Chaper 1

Where Have I Been All My Life

I don’t remember the actor, and I don’t remember the movie, but I remember it was five o’clock in the afternoon and I had just taken a couple hits off my vape pen. I needed to load my Pix account, which held pre-released movies that I was expected to screen before a star of one of the movies was a guest on my Netflix talk show. I was sitting on one of my overpriced chaise longues, the kind that celebrities and Russians purchase for their bedrooms, when I found myself once again unable to convert the TV that descends from the ceiling from Apple TV to Pix. Rich people have descending smart televisions. The idea is that they descend silently and gracefully from the ceiling, but because I am nouveau-riche rich, mine sounds more like a helicopter landing. I’d like to blame my inability to change the mode of my television to Pix on the fact that I was stoned, but that would be a lie; I’d be even less capable if I was sober.

I called my assistant Brandon at his house, to tell him to tell my other assistant, Tanner—who was downstairs in my house—to come upstairs and help me with the television. I hung up the phone. I looked down at the table and saw the vape pen. How many more hits of marijuana would I need to get through this movie?

I knew things had hit a new low—or high, depending on how you looked at the situation. I picked up the iPad that controls the TV along with everything else in my house—from the window shades to the exterior lights in my backyard, to my pulse, probably—and tried to pretend that I was troubleshooting, so that Tanner would think I had at least tried to figure it out on my own—as if that had ever happened before.

How did I become so useless? And how many assistants did I actually have? Answer: two. Brandon and Tanner. Brandon is gay and has an incredible attention to detail. Tanner is straight, and before he met me, he thought that the Four Seasons was a weather pattern. Before I met Tanner, I thought Venmo was an online liquor store.

Tanner was now upstairs standing behind the chaise I was sitting on. I wondered if he could smell the weed I’d just smoked, and if so, what did he think of me? Did he realize that most television hosts don’t even make the time to watch movies and TV shows to prepare for each of their upcoming guests? Did he understand that I was a consummate professional who went to great lengths to get ready for my show? Or did he think that I was just some rich, lucky, white bitch who continued to fall upward? No, that wasn’t quite right: I doubt he was thinking in terms of race. Two white people surely weren’t thinking about skin color. I was the one thinking that.

I didn’t want to watch another stupid f***ing movie that I didn’t care about. And I really didn’t want to interview another action star bloviating about his motivation for playing a half man, half mermaid. I just didn’t care, and I wasn’t doing anyone any favors by pretending that I did.

Did I ever care? The answer is yes. There was a time when all of this mattered to me. There was a time when being famous and having this kind of success and money and having a TV show was what drove me to want more and more and more, and now I found myself exhausted and ashamed by the meaninglessness of it all.

I remember coming home a couple of weeks before the 2016 election on a windy fall night—which for Los Angeles is rare. Anytime there’s weather in Los Angeles, even rain, it’s exciting—the constant sunshine can start to grate on your nerves. I went up to my bedroom, opened up my sliding glass doors, grabbed my vape pen, and turned on some Neil Young. I lay on my bed in the dark, watching the wind blow my bedroom drapes around, hearing the ruffling of the leaves, and watching the lanterns that hang from my backyard trees swinging into each other, thinking, If there’s an electrical fire, I hope the dogs will at least bark to wake me up, but overall, my thought was: This is f***ing awesome. This is exactly what I’d hoped adulthood would be.

No kids, no husband, no responsibilities—just a TV show on Netflix and whatever else I felt like doing, whenever I felt like doing it. Not trapped, not stuck, not dependent on a single person but myself—free to be you and me. I couldn’t believe how lucky my life had turned out, how many of my dreams had come true, and also my good fortune in being alive during this time in history—the year we were going to elect our first female president.

I suppose I could blame my state of mind on the election of Donald Trump—so I will. I have the Trump family and their horrifying personalities and veneers to thank for my midlife crisis. Along with more than half the population—of the world—I couldn’t grasp how, in this day and age, we elected a man who insulted Mexicans and women and Muslims and veterans and disabled people and everyone else he has insulted since. The contrast in decency between Barack Obama and Donald Trump was too much for me to bear—like electing Snooki to the Senate. Now people were seriously talking about Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson running for president. How on earth did we get here? Although, if I’m being honest, at that point in time—or at any other time during the entire Trump presidency—I would have preferred an actual rock.

Editorial Reviews

04/22/2019

Amusingly offbeat and told with the biting sarcasm expected of the TV personality, Handler’s sixth book (after Uganda Be Kidding Me) packs a surprising amount of emotion and introspection. After a somewhat shaky start that amounts to an extensive admission of her attraction to special counsel Robert Mueller, Handler quickly dives into the meat of the memoir with a detailed and passionately wrought account of her therapy sessions with neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel. Through dialogue, Handler shares her struggles to complete menial tasks, her contentious relationship with her father, her inability to empathize (“I never stop showing up , but I don’t put myself in their shoes”), and the profound impact her brother’s accidental death had on her when she was young. The long stretches of self-reflection become dense at times, but are punctuated by lighter excursions in which Handler talks about her dogs (“I am someone who knows that loving a dog makes you a kinder and fuller person”). These insights provide much needed moments of lightness in an otherwise sobering narrative of how Handler came to peace with her complicated relationship with vulnerability. Fans of the comedian will appreciate her candid and sincere introspection. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

A disarmingly, unblinkingly honest work.”—Chicago Tribune

“This will be one of your favorite books of all time. Through her intensely vulnerable, honest, and hilarious reflections Chelsea shows us more than just her insides. She shows us ourselves.”—Amy Schumer

“The Chelsea Handler I know is a take-no-prisoners activist for the causes she believes in. She brings the same fearlessness and commitment to telling her truth in this book. I’m hoping that one day, in exchange for this blurb, she will let me see the security camera footage of the dog fight in her bedroom.”—Trevor Noah

“This is, of course, a roller coaster ride, since it’s a Chelsea Handler book, but it’s a thoughtful roller coaster ride, including not only dog poop and hallucinogenics, but a tour-de-force loop-the-loop through formative trauma and questions of how to be a grown-up and what it means to go deeper into your own life, and I’m sure I mentioned funny bits.”—Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me 

“In this brutally truthful memoir, Chelsea Handler introduces us to the family, struggles, and triumphs that have shaped her life. Her story is both personal and highly relatable, especially for anyone who has ever wondered why we’re on this earth and what we can do to change it for the better. This book is hilarious and heartbreaking; I could not put it down. Chelsea is the girlfriend you want to share your stories with and the woman you want with you on the front lines.”—Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood and author of Make Trouble

 “I don’t know of any other writer who could move from Robert Mueller to edibles to rescue dogs in a way that makes you laugh, cry, and ponder the meaning of life. Chelsea Handler’s political awakening in the Trump Era serves as the hilariously insightful backdrop for Life With Be The Death of Me, a book in which she chronicles her own journey and our collective insanity with just the right mix of sincerity and snark.”—Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America

From the Publisher

2019-03-18
A presidential election, a midlife crisis, and psychiatric therapy bring some revelation to the author and perhaps a turning point as well.

Handler (Uganda Be Kidding Me, 2014, etc.) is at a crossroads. She has become the embodiment of the sort of elitist entitlement that she fears helped elect a president she hates. She also seems burdened by what she previously might have considered blessings, living a bubblelike existence with assistants to deal with her every command and inconvenience and few significant responsibilities. "I have the Trump family and their vampiric veneers and horrifying personalities to thank for my midlife crisis," she writes of the anger and emptiness she felt amid a successful life. She had conquered the comedy circuit, the TV screen, and the bestseller lists, but it no longer seemed enough in the wake of a national crisis. But what could she do? As it became obvious that her inner turmoil ran deeper than Trump, she finally sought therapy. "I was forty-two when I finally saw a real psychiatrist," she writes, providing an exhaustive account of her therapy that includes pages of re-created dialogue. Handler also details the traumas that have shaped her, mainly the death of her brother when she was 9 and, later, the death of each parent, whom she had loved with such ambivalence and grieved differently than what she thought was expected. Her brother has remained fixed in her memory as the first man who broke her heart, and rather than experience such heartbreak again, she has found deeper, more meaningful relationships with her dogs, who provide much of the comic relief in the text. When her therapist advised, "you have been a human doing, and we need to get you to be a human being," she winced at the banality. But by the end, she matches him with, "wake up. Take a nap. Laugh. Cry. Rinse. Repeat."

An adequate self-help memoir from a woman who wouldn't seem like the type for self-help books.

Kirkus Reviews

Comedian Chelsea Handler's decision to narrate this memoir means that her trademark breezy irreverence peppers this laugh-out-loud glimpse of her life and running interior monologue. As she races through her feelings about current events, American politics, and her rise to fame, fans will be clutching their sides with laughter and delight at the intimate feel of the listening experience. Handler's years of performing stand-up comedy come to her aid as an audiobook narrator. Her timing, pitch, and pace are flawless. We are swept along, chuckling at her outrage over ice cube usage in Europe and her inability to master her television. Handler holds nothing back, including her obsession with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which she divulges with relish. M.R. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2019 - AudioFile