An uproarious memoir/tongue-in-cheek guide to leaving the cool city in which you "found" yourself and moving somewhere far more ordinary.
So you escaped whatever lame podunk little town you grew up in and moved to The Big City. Maybe it was New York. Maybe it was Seattle or San Francisco, or Chicago, Minneapolis, or Kansas City. Wherever it was, you'd made it to the place you always knew you belonged and it was home. There was amazing stuff everywhere you turned--Ethiopian food! A movie theater that played documentaries! A "stylist" who actually knew what to do with frizz! In the face of all that amazingness, 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 thirteen stops to arrive anywhere resembling a backyard (urban!), which you shared with millions of other cranky naked mole rat apartment dwellers.
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 realized you had to leave.
When Frank Sinatra and then Jay Z said that if you could make it in New York, you could make it anywhere, they probably weren't talking about tract housing in middle-of-nowhere-kota or whatever borough or suburb you used to make fun of. Because making it is really hard to do without art-house films, glossy hair, and delivery of anything other than pizza or the paper.
How to Leave is the perfect book for anyone coming to terms with leaving their own personal Mecca and moving to a new city (or town, or even village). Erin Clune regales readers with priceless stories of her own experiences trying to make it when she returned to her hometown in Wisconsin, and provides a jocular but useful guide to finding contentment in a place far, far away from The City.
