Samantha Schoech March 9, 2021Updated: March 9, 2021, 1:46 pm
“You’re Leaving When? Adventures in Downward Mobility,” by Annabelle Gurwitch. Photo: Counterpoint
If you are, like Annabelle Gurwitch, “just another ordinary cisgender heterosexual” woman of a certain age, reading her new collection of personal essays, “You’re Leaving When?” will most likely feel like a long, intimate chat with your funniest friend. Gurwitch is a bestselling author and one of those actors who’s made her living in Hollywood for decades without becoming a household name. She’s also a good hang.
When the book opens with “Homeward Bound” (one of the best in the book), Gurwitch’s only child has just left for college, her husband of 20 years has decided he wants a new life (without her), she has “aged out” of acting, and both her parents have recently died her mother passing suddenly the day of her father’s funeral. As she writes in the introduction, “It was t