I'LL JUST BE FIVE MORE MINUTES

Humorous essays about a woman trying to reconcile herself with her own mind.

As she recounts in her first essay collection, which toggles between humor and poignancy à la Samantha Irby, Farris was in her mid-30s when she was diagnosed with ADHD, which “makes so much sense. I was a kid with a quick temper and a serious lack of impulse control. I interrupted sentences (my own included) with new ideas (brilliant ones, of course!), and I’d often get late-night bursts of inspiration that kept me up doing crafty projects way past my bedtime.” As an adult, these issues persist. In between digging herself out from under mountains of dirty laundry and catching up on last year’s tax forms, Farris offers trenchant thoughts on what it means to be neurodivergent and how she came to see her condition as a strength. “On our first anniversary, after a few too many Old Fashioneds,” she writes, “I asked my husband if he regretted marrying me. ‘I wouldn’t exactly call it regret,’ he said. He spent the next twenty minutes trying to explain his answer, but I didn’t hear any of it.” Farris describes a childhood among distracted adults, a hectic period as a young woman trying to finish college and earn a living in New York, awkward attempts to find love, and her current incarnation as a wife and mother. Decidedly nonlinear, the essays hop around both in time and subject matter. Though the author isn’t always quite as funny as she thinks she is—her humor strains at times—and all the hopping about inevitably results in occasional repetition, these are mild complaints for a book that is engaging and appealing even when it falls short of captivating.

A smart and charming collection from an endearingly spiky new voice.