Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light

Essays

By: Helen Ellis

Narrated by: Helen Ellis

The bestselling author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code returns with an “inspiring, hilarious, straight-to-the-point” (Entertainment Weekly) collection of essays on friendship among grown-ass women.

"Ellis' prose is filled with so many laugh lines, you might want to go ahead and book the Botox.”—NPR

When Helen Ellis and her lifelong friends arrive for a reunion on the Redneck Riviera, they unpack more than their suitcases: stories of husbands and kids, lost parents and lost jobs, powdered onion dip and photographs you have to hold by the edges, dirty jokes and sunscreen with SPF higher than they hair-sprayed their bangs senior year, and a bad mammogram. It's a diagnosis that scares them, but could never break their bond. Because women pushing fifty won't be pushed around.

In these twelve gloriously comic and moving essays, Helen Ellis dishes on married middle-age sex, sobs with a theater full of women as a psychic exorcises their sorrows, gets twenty shots of stomach bile to the neck to get rid of her double chin, and gathers up the courage to ask, "Are you there, Menopause? It's Me, Helen."

A book that comes across like the best cocktail party of your life, Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light is alive with the sensational humor and ferocious love for her friends that won Helen Ellis legions of fans. This book has a raw vulnerability and an emotional generosity that takes this acclaimed author to a whole new level of accomplishment.

©2021 Helen Ellis (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

Southern Book Award Finalist

A New York Post Best New Book to Read

A Garden and Gun Best Book of the Year

A New York Times New and Noteworthy Book

A PureWow Best Beach Read of 2021

A Buzzfeed Book to Read this Summer

A People Best Book of the Week

“Sharply funny… Ellis has clearly found her stride—or, in her case, her strut. The writer who so memorably opened American Housewife with a Beyoncé-inspired 'stallion walk to the toaster' is indeed noticeably unbridled and self-assured in this collection… The spirit of Nora Ephron… hovers over this book… Ellis' prose is filled with so many laugh lines, you might want to go ahead and book the Botox… Ellis is a hoot. She's also a force… She has come to own the power of her personality—and her work.”—Heller McAlpin, NPR

"Despite how often I type the letters 'LOL,' it actually takes a lot for me to laugh out loud. But I found myself doing so at least once a chapter while reading the Alabama native Helen Ellis’s new essay collection, Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light... Hilarious."—Amanda Heckert, Garden and Gun

"As with everything written by the Alabama-born novelist who gave us Southern Lady Code, this collection of twelve essays is equal parts irreverent and poignant—a mirthful toast to friendship at middle age."—Southern Living

lol fun

Loved this....so real...full of LOL moments....current. A must for every woman. I'm her people. thank you.

Feels like a conversation with a friend

This book is delightful and insightful. It is read by the author and hits home on so many levels as a woman in my late thirties. I appreciated all the stories and characters and only wish that the author concluded the story with a little more, the ending felt abrupt. However, I look forward to reading more by this author.

Laugh out loud funny

Short and sweet, funny and real. This book is probably geared toward women aged mid 30's to their 50's. I'm 42 and could definitely relate. I really enjoyed it and laughed out loud more than once. I will definitely be looking for other books by this author.

amusing & endearing

she tells it like it is & feels like girls night out sharing stories & laughs!

Takes You Away from the Everyday To Laugh Out Loud, Raise Your Martini Glass or Gym Water Bottle Places

Takes you away from the everyday to Laugh Out Loud, Raise Your Glass or Water Bottle places. Also sage advice about your neck. Be careful listening on Audible you may exclaim or laugh out loud and everyone will stare. Enjoy this fun summer fare.

Not for me

I think this book was written for the 40 somethings out there. As an older woman I did not find it funny or even very interesting. I have better books to read. thanks