Fic­tion

NSFW: A Novel

  • Review
By – July 5, 2022

The title of Isabel Kaplan’s debut adult nov­el, NSFW, not safe for work”, is apt. The book is about work, both in terms of how we spend our time and how we derive some part of our iden­ti­ty from what we do. The nov­el is set dur­ing 2012, and the unnamed pro­tag­o­nist has returned to her home­town of Los Ange­les after grad­u­at­ing from Har­vard. She decides she’d like to work in tele­vi­sion and — thanks to a fam­i­ly con­nec­tion — gets a job as an assis­tant at a network.

The work starts nor­mal­ly enough — order­ing sal­ads for her boss­es and man­ag­ing their eye-roll wor­thy com­plaints (“It’s your job to make sure I know what time it is. How am I sup­posed to know what time it is?”). It seems as though the nov­el may sim­ply take us along as the pro­tag­o­nist ris­es through the ranks. But it takes a turn when one of her col­leagues sex­u­al­ly assaults her. Soon after, a high-rank­ing man at the net­work is revealed to have sex­u­al­ly coerced sev­er­al women, includ­ing the protagonist’s close work friend Allyn.

Allyn’s expe­ri­ence shocks the pro­tag­o­nist; the man is some­one she and her moth­er know well, and who her moth­er insists is one of the good ones.” The man is Jew­ish, like the pro­tag­o­nist and her moth­er, and in an inter­est­ing detail, the pro­tag­o­nist finds out about the assault only because Allyn asks, what’s a tookis?” Allyn sens­es that the pro­tag­o­nist would know the Yid­dish word for butt.” The man had told Allyn she had the best tuchus in the build­ing,” using famil­iar, almost grand­fa­ther­ly lan­guage. But the nov­el sug­gests that these small, seem­ing­ly benign com­ments are part of a larg­er whole — and in this instance were an awful pre­cur­sor to sex­u­al coer­cion. The nov­el is set five years before the alle­ga­tions against Har­vey Wein­stein in 2017, and one won­ders whether his specter loomed large as Kaplan — who also worked in film and tele­vi­sion — was writing.

Near the end of the nov­el, the pro­tag­o­nist receives a call from the col­league who assault­ed her; he presents her with a choice but nev­er admits to his actions, only acknowl­edg­ing that he was an ass” to her because the pro­mo­tion that had tak­en him years to get had seem­ing­ly come so eas­i­ly to her. This sug­gests his rea­son” for assault­ing her was jeal­ousy over work. There is some­thing hor­ri­fy­ing and almost absurd about that moment.

The protagonist’s reac­tion to her and Allyn’s assaults feels very true; she has expe­ri­enced trau­ma but is also focused on their next steps: Come for­ward and your career is prob­a­bly tanked. Stay silent and he won’t have to answer for any of it.” Kaplan plays with the idea of ambiva­lence through­out the nov­el (“So what if I know it’s not my fault. How much good does that do”?). This idea is present at the end of the nov­el and while it is frus­trat­ing to have Kaplan elide a res­o­lu­tion, that seems to be her point — none of the choic­es in this sce­nario are satisfying.

Discussion Questions