Break in Case of Emergency

‘Very smart and juicy and weird and entertaining ... it reads like a chick lit plot written by Franzen’ Curtis Sittenfeld

Jen has reached her early thirties and has all but abandoned a once-promising painting career when, spurred by the economic crisis, she takes a poorly defined job at a feminist nonprofit. The foundation’s aim is to empower women, but staffers spend all their time devising acronyms for imaginary programs, ruthlessly undermining one another, and stroking the ego of their boss, the larger-than-life celebrity philanthropist Leora Infinitas.

Jen’s complicity in this passive-aggressive hellscape only intensifies her feelings of inferiority compared to her two best friends – one a wealthy attorney with a picture-perfect family, the other a passionately committed artist – and so does Jen’s apparent inability to have a baby, a source of existential panic that begins to affect her marriage and her already precarious status at the office.

Jessica Winter’s ferociously intelligent debut novel is a wry satire that explores the difficulty of navigating friendships as they shift to accommodate marriage and family, and the unspoken tensions that can strain even the strongest bonds.