You're Leaving When?

November 15, 2020
Erma Bombeck meets Dorothy Parker in this topical and often laugh-out-loud funny take on our modern malaise. Those only familiar with Gurwitch's tenure (1996-2002) on the TV show Dinner and a Movie will find that it only hinted at the Thurber Award finalist's deceptively literate talents. Not just an accomplished actress, the author is also a contributor to NPR, and her essays and satire have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. Despite her becoming modesty, her accomplishments are of considerably greater import than she often allows, even if her performance and writing gigs aren't always as remunerative as she would like. Gurwitch possesses an appealingly cockeyed sense of humor, and she offers incisive takes on consumer culture and our contemporary confusions and lighthearted (though pointed) opinions on the travails that beset many middle-age women. In a consistently engaging narrative rich with personal anecdotes, the author pokes fun at her misadventures in love, work, and home maintenance, but she also addresses other pressing matters--economic vulnerability in the gig economy, social inequities, raising nonbinary children, friendship, homelessness, wellness fads, the challenges of a life in the arts, and the mysteries of Zoom--with a similarly breezy touch that is surprisingly effective. Her account of her sudden onset of financial and emotional downward mobility is leavened with a sense of the far greater issues faced by others and punctuated with witty asides. Moonlighting as a film critic in what may be the most irresistible chapter, Gurwitch offers a wonderfully droll skewering of such fluffy wish-fulfillment movies as Something's Gotta Give and Under the Tuscan Sun. Like even the best stand-up routine, not every gag or observation hits the mark, but the signal-to-noise ratio is high. Gurwitch is a likable exemplar of the I'd-rather-laugh-about-it-than-cry-about-it philosophy.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2021

New York Times best-selling author Gurwitch (I See You Made an Effort) is back with a coming-of-a-certain-age memoir about what it means to be part of the American middle class in steady decline. Home sharing with people experiencing homelessness, dating while gray, boomerang parenting, caring for aging parents, and eco-anxiety are just a few of the topics covered in this hilarious and honest collection of essays. Gurwitch's perspective on both the major and the mundane will be relatable to anyone who understands how the American Dream has devolved into a fever dream. From parenting during the age of COVID-19 and Zoom meetings to living with anxiety to running out of gas on the way to celebrate family milestones, her stories are as personal as they are universal. The author is at her best when including a series of unsent letters to various people, including girlfriends, relatives, and even her mortgage company. VERDICT The latest from Gurwitch will have readers rolling with laughter one minute and picking up the phone to commiserate with friends or family the next. The author is a delightful eccentric aunt-to-all with her wit, caring, and unbeknown-to-her wisdom. For fans of Nora Ephron and Sloane Crosely alike.--Alana Quarles, Fairfax County Public Library, Alexandria, VA

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2021
After writing all about her family in her last book of humorous essays, Wherever You Go, There They Are (2017), author and actor Gurwitch focuses her latest on herself. Navigating a divorce, Gurwitch finds herself alone in her house struggling to pay the bills while piecing together a career in the gig economy. She takes in renters (her first chosen simply because he is French and leaves her home smelling like bacon and cigarettes), applies to a program that pays a stipend to people providing temporary housing to homeless youth, tries to convince her girlfriends to build a compound of tiny houses, and gets creative about saving money. While her general take on all this is humorous, she writes with empathy and knowledge that her situation is nowhere near rock bottom. There are also many heartfelt moments, especially surrounding her nonbinary child. This is mostly fun stuff, but it's also honest, confronting difficult and unexpected situations that many middle-aged women may find themselves in. Gurwitch is an excellent companion to navigate the fraught future with.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 19, 2021
Actress Gurwitch (Wherever You Go, There They Are) examines life in Los Angeles in these delightfully snarky essays. Gurwitch writes of embracing the home-sharing trend and taking in a colorful array of roommates, most notably Jean Luc—a bacon-loving, chain-smoking 27-year-old Frenchman—and later, a young couple and their pet rabbit. She respectfully recounts supporting her former son, Ezra, as they identified as nonbinary and queer, an experience that taught her to relearn her pronouns “one day at a time.” Gurwitch can find humor practically anywhere, even in articulating every Angeleno’s worst fear: the probability of a major earthquake: “When the Big One hits, it’s going to be a rollicking ride,” she writes about her house, which is directly over an earthquake fault zone. The city’s weather patterns (“Our weather forecasts should simply read: ‘Biblical’ ”) are another favorite target. While her style is mostly irreverent, Gurwitch also has a serious side, which comes out in her frank writing about being a mother with a kid in rehab: “I wore my consistent lack of improvement as a badge of honor. I was reliably inept. In a world that was constantly changing, at least I was consistent.” By turns bittersweet and hilarious, these spot-on musings will strike a chord with anyone stuck in a spot of bother. Agent: Lynn Johnston.