Here is what has changed in Hollywood since #MeToo: not much. If the bar for tolerable behaviour was on the floor before – no, make that underground – then now, it’s hovering just above floor level. It is widely understood that you are not to grope or make sexual advances on your employees, and that if you do so, you may face consequences. Throwing items in the office, and particularly in the direction of your employees, is now off limits. People previously unaware of the terms “implicit bias” and “microaggressions” have now attended training sessions about them and know that they are bad. They believe themselves to be free of them. 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 promised never to publish anything that he was uncomfortable with. I reminded him that I had never written about him because I knew he didn’t want me to – even during the years we weren’t together. From the outside, the unnamed protagonist in NSFW appears the vision of success. She has landed an entry-level position at a leading TV network that thousands of college grads would kill for. And sure, she has much to learn. The daughter of a prominent feminist attorney, she grew up outside the industry, better versed in gender dynamics than box office hits. But she’s resourceful and hardworking―what could go wrong?

NSFW is the story of a young Harvard grad who, thanks to a fairly healthy dose of nepotism adjacent connections, lands a temp job at the television network XBC. Her own skillset is what gets our unnamed protagonist promoted to an assistant position for one of the major movers and shakers of the network and eventually even allows her to sit in on pitches for new program development. The timeframe is prior to #metoo where office engagement is taken as . . . . When I found myself sad and lonely in the Upper West Side apartment of my now-ex-boyfriend’s dreams, I turned to Nora Ephron. I hunted through her body of work searching for clues, trying to understand who and what my ex-boyfriend loved and feared. I was like an obsessed detective with a bulletin board full of snapshots, but instead of suspects, I had still frames of Meg Ryan. I connected threads until they were tangled in knots. Not Safe for Work follows an assistant in a major Hollywood TV studio in the early 2010s, described as "an ambitious young woman striving to get ahead in a world where a glossy veneer of glamour masks a deeply toxic underbelly".I put this book on my TBR simply for the title alone. If you are new here, one of little joys I get out of life is carrying around my own selection of “NSFW” book titles and covers so this one automatically hit the sweet spot simply for the outside. Then the Center for Fiction debut novel nominees were announced and – yay me – I already had this on hold at the library. Unfortunately for this novel, I think it has zero chance at winning thanks to said nominations also including the brilliant Nightwalking, but I thought this was great too.

Frank, funny and unputdownable, Isabel Kaplan's NSFW takes you on an ambitious young woman's wild ride through Hollywood. Her mother's a famous feminist lawyer, and she's a rising executive star, mistress of her destiny. But behind the glitter and the justice, everyone is tarnished and compromised - including even our narrator. Kaplan, with her sharp and nuanced eye, sees it all, and tells it brilliantly. Claire MessudThe ability to bend an inch at a time while seeming to stand up straight is a useful and gendered skill. Most women I know do it regularly. They bend until they’re pretzeled and then blame themselves for the body aches. I’ve thought a lot about these dynamics. I wrote a whole book exploring them. And yet. There I was. But that didn’t make sense. He first broke up with me a few years ago because I wasn’t successful and independent enough. He wanted a partner, not a wife, he said. 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. P.S. The blurb says that this is a debut work, but it isn't. The author published a previous book in 2007, also set in LA. After reading this one, I may have to buy it. It's YA but it looks like it's on the more mature end of the YA spectrum. A Harvard graduate, she’s smart enough to know what is expected of women like her in this world: it’s not enough to be good at your job, you need to also be appealing and attractive, and willing to play the game, whatever that may be.