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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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.

Osteen said: “There’s not so much as a beat out of place in Isabel Kaplan’s prose, with a wit to match. She makes it easy to champion her work, which is engaging, insightful, wry and frankly brilliant. What an honour to have found a home at Penguin Michael Joseph, with a team whose vision is sharp and support boundless.” 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? 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.”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...” 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

She has an idea of what she wants her life to be but she is just starting to learn that maybe none of that will make her happy. In addition to her work life we see her romantic life and in particular her regular interactions with her mother, who is paying for a lot of the things our narrator can't afford on her small salary, and who constantly demands her time and attention. Her mother in particular is a fascinating character, and a type we have seen often in the last decade, a woman who knows and understands the structures that men use to assault women, who knows how difficult it is to bring charges up at work or to the police, and a woman who will say "Oh Robert didn't do that," when the man involved is a friend. Our heroine, a young Jewish Los Angeles native who has just taken an assistant job at a TV studio, is no naïf. Sharp, funny . . . The writing is fresh and stylish and the conversational tone helps the thought-provoking narrative zip along. I loved it Daily Mail Brilliantly deadpan and spiky in all the right ways. An accurate, darkly funny but also brutal portrayal of everyday workplace and world power dynamics. I couldn't put it down Emily Itami, Costa-shortlisted author of Fault LinesIt was our second time living together – first in Paris, now New York. My second time moving 3,000 miles to be with him. But here, at least, I spoke the language. I had a job and friends. The compulsively readable novel about a young woman trying to succeed in Hollywood without selling her soul - perfect for fans of Sweetbitter, My Dark Vanessa and Exciting Times Is it my job to tell him “you, too”? If I thank him for his congratulations and leave it at that, am I demonstrating complicity, failing to practice what I preach? But on the other hand, why should the emotional labour of calling him out fall to me?

I found the protagonist here to be unbearable, the story difficult to care about, and the #metoo theme forced, as if the author wrote this book because she wanted to capitalize on the movement and threw together a copycat and clichéd way to make it happen. Heartburn, Ephron’s only novel, is a thinly veiled and darkly hilarious story about a woman whose husband has an affair when she’s seven months pregnant. Meanwhile, her outwardly impressive but privately difficult and unstable mother is a constant source of stress. At some point, something has to give. The question is, is success worth all the compromises? And at what point do you become complicit in a system you recognise is problematic?He didn’t suggest that I give up writing. He purported to support my ambitions, and I tried to come up with justifications for keeping a private journal. I didn’t counter that maybe he should choose his words as if I’d remember them. Readers who were obsessed with My Dark Vanessa, this one is for you. A blistering look at the hidden side of Hollywood Glamour, 'BEST NEW BOOKS'