WHY I’M LIKE THIS

Debut collection of essays traversing everything from the mysteries of summer camp and the eccentricities of one’s parents to acting in independent films and the love one feels for a newborn.

Freelance journalist Kaplan grew up in the WASPy Connecticut of the 1970s (“In my town there were so few Jews that unless you were dressed like the Hasidim, it just didn’t occur to people that you might be Jewish”). Like many a humorist, she observes high school from the edge of popularity, watching her girlfriends slow-dancing with jocks while she nurses multiple cases of unrequited love. After graduating from college, she settles in Manhattan and tries her hand at acting in commercials, indie films, and theater. (“I play at least one lesbian a year in one or another downtown theater.”) To support herself, she waits tables—usually running into her overeducated former classmates. Her fellow waiters teach her the lyrics to Sondheim songs, the choreography from every Broadway show from the past 50 years, and how to make a decent cappuccino. She finally abandons restaurant work for the world of the retail headhunter, which allows her the financial freedom to seriously pursue acting. The eccentrics of the world seem fond of Kaplan; she moseys through a community populated in part by a therapist who needs more help than her clients (the therapist tries to borrow money, credit cards, and prescription drugs from her patients), a gadget-loving father (he was one of the first drivers in the 1960s to own a mobile car phone), and a host of loser boyfriends (one even stood her up on her birthday). Not everything is glibly rendered; as Kaplan’s grandmother succumbs to Alzheimer’s, the author’s meditation on the symbolic value of inanimate objects—in this case her grandmother’s leather pocketbook—is simple and heartfelt.

A fresh voice with a bright future.