Finding success in Hollywood is not easy, especially if you are a woman. Even if you are the daughter of a widely celebrated feminist attorney. Even if you’ve graduated from Harvard. Even if you’ve spent your life being trained on how to defend yourself against men who think you owe them something.
The narrator of this story never gives her name, but she gets an interview with the owner of the XBC network because her mother has done some work for him. Robert is a longtime friend to her family, and she has decided she wants a job in television, specifically in development, where the new shows get made. All Robert can offer her is an internship, but if she does well, she might be able to land a permanent position she can work her way up from.
She is smart and understands how to play well with others, so she quickly learns the politics of the office. She learns what she needs to do to keep her job and figures out how to be promoted to an assistant. She makes friends with another assistant, Allyn, and she keeps her eyes and ears open.
But things are difficult with her mother. She wants to have a good relationship with her mother. While she just wants a quiet life, a job where she can be successful, a relationship with a supportive man, a sense of peace, her mother seems to be addicted to drama and continually calls her daughter to yell at her or to ask for awkward favors.
And then she hears about a thing that happened. Apparently one of the stars of an XBC show was accused of assaulting a woman at a party. Her bosses try to keep it quiet, but her mother tells her about it. So while she knows what’s going on at the network, she can’t talk to her coworkers about it because her mother could get in trouble.
Then one night working late and drinking bourbon, she too is assaulted, but by a coworker she had trusted. She spends some time thinking and healing, trying to decide what she wants to do about it. She understands the consequences of coming forward, both personally and professionally, but she also wants to do the right thing. Will she be able to reconcile working in an industry that is still so hostile to women, or will she have to start over somewhere else? And how will she explain her mother, a feminist attorney, standing up for the studio that is protecting a sexual offender?
NSFW is a compelling novel about working in Hollywood from debut author Isabel Kaplan. This book pulls no punches, showing Hollywood in all its ugliness, and with its potential. Having a narrator with no name made things a little awkward, but it does make this feel a little like an allegory, like this is something that could happen to anyone. I listened to the audio on this one, and narrator Stephanie Nemeth Parker really did an amazing job with this story. She added the right amount of intelligence and emotion, of sarcasm and thoughtfulness.
I liked NSFW. I think it’s smart and insightful. However, it’s not an easy read, and it’s not for everyone. As I was closing in on the end of the book, I couldn’t think of a major female character who wasn’t sexually harrassed or assaulted. It came from sources expected and unexpected, and it was covered up and dismissed until someone needed leverage to further their own career. I have heard the stories of Hollywood, and I don’t doubt that a lot of this is true to the industry, but if the misconduct is truly as ubiquitous as it is at this one network, we should just burn the studio lots down and read more books.
So I thought this was an interesting book to listen to. But it wasn’t easy to listen to, and I think it will stick with me for a while to come, making me rethink all my entertainment choices and growing in respect for all the women who came forward and shared their personal stories of bad Hollywood behavior.
A copy of the audio book of NSFW was provided by Macmillan Audio through NetGalley, with many thanks.
