You're Leaving When?: Adventures in Downward Mobility

With 2014's I See You Made an Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50, actress Annabelle Gurwitch proved that she's a hilarious sharer of uncomfortable truths about her age cohort. With the commensurately funny essay collection You're Leaving When?: Adventures in Downward Mobility, she aims higher--chronologically, that is. As she puts it, "We, who once debated being Rachels, Monicas, or Phoebes, are now vying for who gets to be Blanche or Dorothy from The Golden Girls."

After she saw her only child off to college, Gurwitch--menopausal, freshly divorced and gaining on 60--assumed that "my future would be filled with hot-air balloon tours and Zumba classes." Instead, she suffered financial setbacks as a result of losing her union health insurance, "aging out of" her acting career and suddenly being forced to run a household on one income. Gurwitch finds herself obliged to economize by showering at her yoga studio, hoarding product samples and renting out a room in her Los Angeles home to strangers. Some of the essays in You're Leaving When? address first-world concerns with cheeky self-awareness, as when Gurwitch pines for a fancy pillow that she can't afford. More reflective of her values is "If You Lived with Me You'd Be Home by Now," her account of temporarily housing a homeless young couple through a Host Home program. The piece is a worthy short-form counterpart to Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, but with better jokes. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

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