You're Leaving When?

Adventures in Downward Mobility

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Pub Date 02 Mar 2021 | Archive Date 02 Mar 2021

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Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of I See You Made an Effort comes a timely and hilarious chronicle of downward mobility, financial and emotional.

With signature "sharp wit" (NPR), Annabelle Gurwitch gives irreverent and empathetic voice to a generation hurtling into their next chapter with no safety net and proving that our no-frills new normal doesn't mean a deficit of humor. In these essays, Gurwitch embraces homesharing, welcoming a housing-insecure young couple and a bunny rabbit into her home. The mother of a college student in recovery who sheds the gender binary, she relearns to parent, one pronoun at a time. She wades into the dating pool with a reupholstered vagina and flunks the magic of tidying up. You're Leaving When? is for anybody who thought they had a semblance of security but wound up with a fragile economy and a blankie. "What do we do when we've already reinvented in midlife?" Gurwitch offers stories of resilience, adaptability, low-rent redemption, and the kindness of strangers. Even in a Zoom.
From the New York Times bestselling author of I See You Made an Effort comes a timely and hilarious chronicle of downward mobility, financial and emotional.

With signature "sharp wit" (NPR)...

Advance Praise

“Annabelle Gurwich is so funny that, even when bad things happen, she writes about them in a brilliantly entertaining way.” —Dave Barry    

 

"Erma Bombeck meets Dorothy Parker in this topical and often laugh-out-loud funny take on our modern malaise . . . 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." —Kirkus Reviews


“Annabelle Gurwitch has an amazing—and very welcome—knack for wringing humor from pathos and locating sublimity in absurdity. A breezily hilarious but deeply affecting exploration of loss, human connection, and mortality, You're Leaving When? spins the humorous indignities of middle-age into something like a profound meditation on the human condition.” —Carina Chocano, author of You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Trainwrecks, and Other Mixed Messages 


"Gen X was promised the American Dream but instead found downward mobility, job insecurity, and non-stop caregiving. In her timely essays about boomerang kids, pandemic coworking, and post-divorce dating, Annabelle Gurwitch mines our generational ill luck for humor and insight as only a resilient latchkey kid can: with an arched brow and a gimlet eye." —Ada Calhoun, author of the New York Times bestseller Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis 


“Annabelle Gurwitch tells stories from her life that coalesce into a kind of literary comic opera. These may feel like the worst of times, but her wit, wisdom, and inimitable weirdness (that’s a compliment) will get us through the madness. I’ll happily follow her wherever she takes me.” —Meghan Daum, author of The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through The New Culture Wars


“Annabelle Gurwitch’s You’re Leaving When? is beyond hilarious! This “Grey-Divorced” yoga pants-wearing landlady should just invite us all into her home so we can curl up like cats around her (surely soon to be installed) wine bar for rap sessions about vaginal rejuvenation and radical swiffering. I loved it. A cheering midlife romp!” —Sandra Tsing Loh, author of The Madwoman in the Volvo

  

"Annabelle Gurwitch’s You’re Leaving When? is a pure delight, full of ambivalence, regret, laughter, rage, melancholy, and most importantly, honest observations about grappling with life’s bewildering cavalcade of surprises and disappointments.” —Heather Havrilesky, New York Magazine’s Ask Polly columnist and author of What If This Were Enough?

 

“Everyone needs a friend to guide them through the American middle class in decline, and you couldn't do better than Annabelle Gurwitch. She is sharp-eyed, unfoolable, and hilarious.” —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

“Annabelle Gurwich is so funny that, even when bad things happen, she writes about them in a brilliantly entertaining way.” —Dave Barry    

 

"Erma Bombeck meets Dorothy Parker in this topical and...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781640094475
PRICE $26.00 (USD)
PAGES 224

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Featured Reviews

This book was the perfect escape. It was lovely and fun. It was my first book by this author and I will definitely be on the look out for more!!

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I am pretty sure I am the target audience for this book. I am about the same age as Gurwitch, have a son that graduated college in 2020, just as her child did, live in Los Angeles and am experiencing many of the same thoughts and struggles as she does. I even spent an entire week trying to figure out how to fit a boarder into my 1,000 sq. ft. house just to help pay the mortgage.

I laughed out loud more than once while reading; as much from a feeling of recognition as a result of her genuinely funny writing.

Thanks to Counterpoint Press for providing me with an advanced reading copy via NetGalley.

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Another stellar collection from Annabelle, whose gift is making all the situations she discusses feel relatable to her audience, whether we have experienced them ourselves or not.

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Gurwitch is always a delight, and this outing does not disappoint. Fellow parents of newly-minted adults who have experienced difficulties will appreciate her warmth, wit, and love. I can't imagine a time when I wouldn't pick up a new title by Gurwitch; she's simply that brilliant.

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It's great to read a book that is funny and self-inspecting without being snooty or biting in its attempt at getting a laugh. Too often, memoirs that are meant to be funny and relatable leave "middle America" out in the cold while the authors bemoans the rising price of top-notch vodka, for example. There was none of that here. Gurwitch was able to laugh at herself while exploring common-enough problems and issues. I don't have to be divorced or have a child in college (although I DO have a child in college!) to appreciate her take on these issues.

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