You're Leaving When?

“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