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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So visceral is the narrator's voice that every time I opened the book it felt like sliding into uncomfortable heels. We urgently need to develop avenues for conversations about all the behaviour that lives in this grey space. People previously unaware of the terms “implicit bias” and “microaggressions” have now attended training sessions about them and know that they are bad. I do not miss any of the above, but I did appreciate the reminder and the confirmation that it happens to most of us. I thought the project had a lot of promise and wanted to see if there was anything I could do to push it forward.

My job straddles the worlds of Hollywood and publishing: I run book-to-screen development at a literary agency, which means I am responsible for identifying books that would be good for adaptation, whether as a movie or TV show, and then pitching and helping shepherd them from page to screen. The writing is fresh and stylish and the conversational tone helps the thought-provoking narrative zip along. Throwing items in the office, and particularly in the direction of your employees, is now off limits. 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 .Although I don’t think she would have described herself in this way, I thought that she was extremely strong willed and she had a firm understanding of her own boundaries. She was needy, unreasonable and insistent on maintaining a strong dependency between herself and her daughter. I don’t know how the daughter (I keep saying daughter as she was unnamed in the book) kept her patience and was mostly able to stay polite and courteous as I think I would have cut ties very early on.

I felt personally that I’m just a little bit out of the age range for this as some of the situations in the book were fairly obviously on the way and she just didn’t seem to pick up on the cues. The nuances of our lead character’s co-dependent, majoritively toxic, mother-daughter relationship are also looked at in depth and reveal how much this affects all areas of both of their lives.I was a teeny tiny bit disappointed with the open ending but hopefully it means that there may be more to come as I would love to read more about these characters and their lives. With her sun-bleached Hollywood setting, Kaplan transports us to another world - one which is achingly familiar.

I was surprised when it ended – this is quite a slim novel and it felt like she was just getting started, when it ended. We have come up with a way to discuss and punish the most violent forms of harassment and assault, but not the experiences and dynamics that live in the vast grey space where most discrimination takes place, much more subtly and insidiously, perpetrated by men and women alike. Despite (or, more accurately, because of) its gritty, often raw depiction of a shocking reality for so many women, Not Safe for Work pulled me in.Ambition bites back in Isabel Kaplan's Not Safe For Work, a novel that hits close to a few recent news events . He ended up leaving that production company shortly thereafter, so I didn’t feel compelled to engage in further communication. I understood, in theory, that Hollywood was a hotbed of sexism, racism and unchecked egos, but I had grand ambitions of making change from the inside. My plan was to work my way into the halls of power and then fling the doors open wide for those who had been excluded.

I get the impression it was supposed to be more hard hitting than it was, and it didn’t really say more than we already know. Otherwise, too many people will remain silent because they will decide it’s not worth the discomfort and emotional fallout of making a fuss about a minor comment. Isabel Kaplan’s forthcoming debut novel, Not Safe For Work, follows an ambitious young woman trying to succeed in the entertainment industry without selling her soul.Please get in touch and we will do our best to source your book, no matter how unusual or specialist. Here, the former Hollywood assistant and current director of book-to-film development at a literary agency reflects on the horrifying behaviour she witnessed as a twentysomething – and how little has actually changed in the five years since the Harvey Weinstein scandal. I heard sexist and racist comments and fumed silently, exchanging outraged instant messages with other assistants. 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. Not Safe for Work explores how women are victimised, judged and silenced and forever having to balance not speaking up when, for example, they’re abused or harassed, if the person who did it to them is more powerful.