Not Safe For Work: Author of the viral essay 'My boyfriend, a writer, broke up with me because I am a writer'

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And she knows too well what men are capable of. Her mother is a veteran feminist campaigner, a lawyer who now practises corporate law but who once fought a public battle for the rights of women who had been assaulted or raped. I know how it sounds to suggest my boyfriend dumped me because he’s scared I’ll become like Nora Ephron. You’re thinking: that’s what you’re going with? Or maybe: what’s her name? This book captures that feeling of your early 20's so well, when you start to feel like you are in over your head, when you realize that all the things you thought you knew about yourself and your family and the world may not be true. I’m not, of course. I’m a 32-year-old writer who has published two books and is trying to build a literary career. Only once that began to seem like a legitimate possibility did my ex-boyfriend feel threatened by it. They know you need to be thoughtful about what you say. Some of them now begin sentences with, “I probably shouldn’t say this anymore, but...”

I left my job at the TV network to go to graduate school, during which time I wrote a novel about a Hollywood assistant and the slippery slope of complicity. When I wrote the novel, I didn’t know if I would return to working in Hollywood. I wrote it as if I wouldn’t, with all the emotional honesty I could muster.

Not Safe For Work Book review: Playing the Hollywood game

We urgently need to develop avenues for conversations about all the behaviour that lives in this grey space. We also need to stop blindly applauding powerful women in Hollywood as if their success is inherently “good for women” or an illustration of the system working in a more egalitarian way. Some of the worst men in Hollywood are women. It’s an ugly truth, and one that’s difficult to discuss in the nuanced way it deserves, but women are often better foot soldiers of the patriarchy than men. Particularly women who have held positions of power for a while. Understandable: they, too, are the product of structural forces. That may explain, but it doesn’t excuse. And a number of them wield their gender as a protective shield against criticism. When rumours of an assault start to circle the office, and your close friend confesses her own disturbing experience, you know there is plenty to gain from staying silent. Nor is she innocent to the power dynamics of the industry, securing her position through nepotism like many of those before her.

A frank account of the inherent filthiness of leaning in. A study of the psychological and at times, literal, gymnastics that are required of striving women." - Raven Leilani You thrive under pressure, and are determined to excel. But there's a dark side to the industry that's about to rear its head. And soon, you must decide your place in it: It is a time where compliments should be received with a smile, women expect the worst from other women and apologize for the behaviors of certain men, things sometimes just “go too far” – and we are active participants in our own oppression. So basically, about a decade ago.With her sun-bleached Hollywood setting, Kaplan transports us to another world - one which is achingly familiar. A novel which makes us examine our own complicity, while also weaving in threads of tenderness, drive and office-based humour which at times feels delightfully absurd . . . I inhaled this book - and came up for air still reeling Katie Hale, author of My Name is Monster Prior to this summer, though I had read quite a bit of her writing, I had never seen a Nora Ephron movie. No, that’s not quite right. I saw Julie & Julia in theaters. I know: what kind of person knows the essay panning the egg white omelet but not how Harry met Sally? I wandered Central Park while listening to Nora narrate I Remember Nothing. I watched When Harry Met Sally, then Sleepless in Seattle, then You’ve Got Mail. I watched her son Jacob Bernstein’s documentary, Everything is Copy. I reread Heartburn. I read Richard Cohen’s memoir of his friendship with Nora, She Made Me Laugh. I gaped at the chapter in which Cohen wrote that he personally would have preferred for Nora to keep the whole sordid business of Carl Bernstein’s affair a secret. I read the critic Leon Wieseltier’s Heartburn review , published in Vanity Fair under the pen name Tristan Vox, in which he accused her of child abuse. Our heroine, a young Jewish Los Angeles native who has just taken an assistant job at a TV studio, is no naïf.

With blisteringly sharp prose and a darkly humorous voice, Not Safe For Work is an unflinching exploration of the grey area between empowerment and complicity, and a searing, unforgettable portrait of what success costs in a patriarchal world. When whispers start to circle that your office might have 'a bit of a rape problem,' and your close friend confesses her own unsettling encounter, you know there is plenty to gain from staying silent, and all too much to lose through speaking out. People misunderstand her phrase everything is copy,” my boyfriend explained. “It’s really about making yourself the butt of a joke first so that other people can’t do it to you.”The rare kind of read that made me giggle just as much as it left me gutted." - Zakiya Dalila Harris Nora Ephron was the patron saint of militarized vulnerability. She refused shame. Take, for example, her Esquire essay about having small breasts. Society said: hate your body, but don’t talk about it. Nora said: you don’t get to have it both ways. Her heroine is warm and someone to fight for, even when she’s making bad choices, while the specifically Jewish mother-daughter dynamic (so much guilt) sits just the right side of stereotypical. Light and gossipy in tone, if it’s a beach read it’s also one that will make you think.