NSFW by Isabel Kaplan

 

A book with a title like NSFW is practically daring you to read it, especially at work. YOLO. But NSFW is more than a book with a buzzy title; it's also an incredibly ambitious and timely novel about rape culture, and what working in Hollywood was like prior to the widespread progression of the #MeToo movement in 2017 following the Harvey Weinstein allegations.

The heroine in NSFW is never named, but she's a young Jewish girl living in Hollywood. Her mother was a feminist lawyer famous for taking on rape cases and empowering women to confront their attackers, but now she's having an existential crisis, hover parenting her adult daughter while self-medicating with expensive beauty treatments and questionably prescribed medications. She is good for one thing, though: her connections. She's old friends with a higher-up at a production studio and is able to finagle our protagonist a job.

Our heroine quickly proves herself competent and a little cut-throat. She's insecure but willing to do what needs to be done, and she knows who her allies are. Which is why it's so shocking to her when quiet whispers begin to circulate about certain men in the studio taking advantage of their power to get what they want from the women who work there. She feels valued, and respected (mostly), so surely those other women can't be right? Maybe they did something or maybe they misunderstood the situation. Those are the lies we tell ourselves to believe that we're safe. But in a culture that discourages victims from speaking out and places the burden of proof and the brunt of the blame on the wronged, nobody is ever really safe.

I LOVED this book, okay? I can't believe people aren't talking about it. Or that the ratings are so low! No, this isn't a book with a neat and tidy ending, and often it feels bleak, but the way it captures workplace culture and the so-called post-sexism culture of the early 2010s, when people felt way too optimistic about the all too grim future, is pitch-perfect. The heroine is believably flawed, and I feel like her struggle to come to terms with her own internalized misogyny and the way that she labors under her mother's mixed messages and emotional abuse are so well done. Feminism isn't a set of clear-cut principles and it's a constant journey of self-betterment, so I love seeing books that tackle the process of going through that legwork. It's also just a really good and gossipy story that's hard to put down. In some ways, it reminded me a lot of another "flawed feminist" book I just read, POST-TRAUMATIC.

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.

4.5 to 5 out of 5 stars