Lifeform
from the bestselling author of Little Weirds
Published on 7. October 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-0-349-12750-7 (ISBN)
Description
From actor, comedian, co-creator of Marcel the Shell, and New York Times bestselling author of Little Weirds Jenny Slate, a wild, soulful, hilarious collection of genre-bending essays depicting the journey into motherhood as you've never seen it before.
What happened was this: Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and in that period there was a deep dark loneliness that she had to face and befriend, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, and in that period she was like chimes, or a flock of clean breaths, and her spine lying flat was the many-colored planks on the xylophone, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love, because of past injury. And then what happened was that she became a wild-pregnant-mammal-thing and then she exploded herself by having a whole baby blast through her vagina during a global plague and then she was expected to carry on like everything was normal-but was this normal, and had she or anything ever been normal?
Herein lies an account of this journey, told in five phases-Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby, and Ongoing-through luminous, laugh-out-loud funny, unclassifiable essays that take the form of letters to a doctor, dreams of a stork, fantasy therapy sessions, gossip between racoons, excerpts from an imaginary olden timey play, obituaries, theories about post-partum hair loss, graduation speeches, and more. No one writes like Jenny Slate.
What happened was this: Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and in that period there was a deep dark loneliness that she had to face and befriend, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, and in that period she was like chimes, or a flock of clean breaths, and her spine lying flat was the many-colored planks on the xylophone, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love, because of past injury. And then what happened was that she became a wild-pregnant-mammal-thing and then she exploded herself by having a whole baby blast through her vagina during a global plague and then she was expected to carry on like everything was normal-but was this normal, and had she or anything ever been normal?
Herein lies an account of this journey, told in five phases-Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby, and Ongoing-through luminous, laugh-out-loud funny, unclassifiable essays that take the form of letters to a doctor, dreams of a stork, fantasy therapy sessions, gossip between racoons, excerpts from an imaginary olden timey play, obituaries, theories about post-partum hair loss, graduation speeches, and more. No one writes like Jenny Slate.
Reviews / Votes
An absurdist reflection on motherhood and the human experience . . . Absurdist humor, magical realism, fanciful self-reflection - in Lifeform, Slate's second solo effort, she wields all manner of literary embellishments in the name of channeling emotional honesty * Washington Post * Though Slate's eccentric comedy is a constant, she's not afraid to get heartfelt . . . funny, lyrical, and sometimes strange, these essays pulse with life * Publisher's Weekly * Writer and actress Slate's second collection of imaginative, funny, affecting, and hard-to-classify pieces delves deeply into her feelings, dreams, and visions about pregnancy and becoming a mother. . . . Some extra-out-there pieces cement this as another wonderfully weird, incomparable, and utterly enjoyable book that readers will be glad simply exists -- Booklist, Starred Review Lifeform is an artifact in which Jenny Slate looks at herself as 'Jenny Slate,' a private person and a public avatar of millennial motherhood * Los Angeles Review of Books * Jenny Slate, known for her crackling standup and for voicing Marcel the Shell, here turns her high-wattage attention to the messiness of falling in love, giving birth during a pandemic and adjusting to the "situation" of motherhood-all of it delivered in her singular, zigzagging voice * New York Times * This quirky, totally original book may be a memoir if one is to believe that a human brain can totally live inside a planet of its own making * San Francisco Book Review * Fans old and new will revel in Lifeform's self-effacing humor and imaginative writing style. It's a delightful, memorable immersion in the lifeform that is Jenny Slate * BookPage (starred review) * Imaginative, funny, affecting, and hard-to-classify . . . A wonderfully weird, incomparable, and utterly enjoyable book that readers will be glad simply exists * Booklist (starred review) * At times whimsical in its flights of fancy and always surprising in the moments of lyrical grace it offers, Slate's book celebrates the transformative power of surrendering to love and life. Delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving * Kirkus Reviews *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Dimensions
Height: 199 mm
Width: 125 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
204 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-349-12750-7 (9780349127507)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2024
Fleet
€3.99
Available for download
Person
Jenny Slate is an actress, stand-up comedian, and the New York Times bestselling author of the children's book Marcel The Shell with Shoes On. She has been in many movies and TV shows and also plays many cartoon animals. Jenny is a graduate of Columbia University and has a young heart and an antique soul. She lives in a 100-year-old house in the bizarre and fun city Los Angeles, where nobody ever gets old at all.