A novel that hits close to a few recent news events...When the unnamed narrator gets a gig as an assistant at a prominent movie studio thanks to a crumb of nepotism (her mother is a prominent victims’ rights attorney), she has to prove herself despite the red carpet of privilege rolled out before her...As the title suggests, at the studio she meets a few sleazy men — including a boss with a button in his office that locks the door — who ruin everything for everyone, as sleazy men are wont to do...The story delves where news stories about sexual harassment don’t, into the dark truth that a victim might be better off signing the NDA and taking the hefty cash settlement than standing up as a symbolic martyr, stained by publicity and likely to lose her case...NSFW makes your brain spin on the #MeToo merry-go-round that’s come derailed from the base and spontaneously set on fire.
Kaplan peels back the curtain to examine the culture of a television network in this sharply observed, completely absorbing debut novel...The unnamed narrator is a recent Harvard graduate newly returned to Los Angeles...Her well-connected but codependent mother helps her land a job at XBC, one of the major broadcast networks...As she starts to immerse herself in the day-to-day operations of the network, learning the lingo, and getting to know her fellow assistants, some more genuine than others, she also starts to see the cracks in the slick veneer, from projects of questionable quality to the TV-star who is protected by the network executives and even her own mother when he’s accused of rape by a production assistant...Kaplan’s authentic insider knowledge makes her piercing first outing a cut above the plethora of Hollywood-set novels.
The daughter of a prominent victim’s rights attorney navigates the treacherous pre-#MeToo television industry in Kaplan’s well-crafted but unilluminating adult debut...As the narrator internalizes fatphobia and unrealistic beauty standards, and capitulates to and chafes against the casual misogyny at XBC, she tries to stay afloat in an environment teeming with sexual misconduct...Most intriguing, though, is the narrator’s Sisyphean relationship with her famously feminist mother, who simultaneously longs for her daughter’s success and resents it...Kaplan takes on heavy topics with an appealing frankness and snappy prose but doesn’t offer anything new regarding the no-win scenarios faced by survivors of sexual violence when deciding whether to go public, and as a result her depiction of the double bind comes off as rather mundane...As a Hollywood coming-of-age story, this does the job, but those in search of a new take on the larger issues at play will be left unsatisfied
