Jen has reached her early thirties and has all but abandoned a once-promising painting career when spurred by the 2008 economic crisis, she takes a poorly defined job at a feminist nonprofit. The foundation’s ostensible 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—as 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.
I loved Jessica Winter’s Break in Case of Emergency. Although the book started out a little slow for my taste and the story alone was not that interesting, Winter’s prose, her writing, and dialogues just really got a hold of me. Her story is funny, witty and it had me laughing out loud a few times. It was really refreshing to read something this different, fresh and invigorating. Definitely not your typical chick-lit. I highly recommend it as a great summer read.
I received an early copy of this book for free from Penguin Random House in exchange for my honest review. The new edition of this book is scheduled to be published on July 12, 2016.
