Cynthia Kaplan’s voice in this wide-ranging collection of essays is infectious. Spending an afternoon with this book is like having lunch with your warm, slightly wacky friend from camp whom you haven’t seen in a while. Kaplan feels familiar, and she writes with the assumption that she can tell you anything and you won’t hold it against her. In this way her irreverence is disarming. Only later do you realize there are serious subjects buried here.
Jumping from the pitfalls of going on a family cruise to feelings of mortification after a poor showing for an audition for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” Kaplan offers herself up for the reader to judge, warts and all. Sometimes, as when she declares she has lost her belief in God, she writes herself into a circle. Reading Kaplan’s essay “Losing My Religion” one concludes that surely she believes in some sort of higher being after all. But Kaplan is steadfastly irreverent, and offers up this credo instead: “Believe what you want to believe and don’t be an asshole.”
Kaplan’s great gift is making us realize that we’ve all had dark moments and that it’s okay. Her edges are there but softened by humor. She’ll tell you anything, and you’d tell her anything too.