A CLOSET FEMINIST follows the misadventures of 20-something Bella Hirsch as she navigates the world of work and the mystery of sudden romance. Bella hops from New York’s whirlwind to a tony grad school in Philadelphia, and discovers not just love, but a surprising ambition. Fast-paced and witty, this is a romantic comedy with a morality tale wrapped inside.
A CLOSET FEMINIST follows the misadventures of 20-something Bella Hirsch as she navigates the world of work and the mystery of sudden romance. Bella hops from New York’s whirlwind to a tony grad school in Philadelphia, and discovers not just love, but a surprising ambition. Fast-paced and witty, this is a romantic comedy with a morality tale wrapped inside.
Breathe in, breathe out, I told myself, hoping to achieve that inner peace everyone spoke about. I closed my eyes in search of a blurb for Aunt Zelda’s Flying Umbrella. “Letitia Worth has written another delight, filled with the elusive mysteries of childhood,” I wrote—a phrase recycled time and time again, only with different authors. It was fitting, in a way. Since I never bothered to read any of the books in question, their contents would remain, permanently, a mystery to me as well. And I waited for the clock to strike noon.
I was meeting a man for lunch—a certain Peter Greene. He was attractive in a New York intellectual way, speaking in flowing sentences, like one of those surprisingly clever men in French movies. His passions were Marxism, politics, and high-quality audio equipment, perhaps in the reverse order, though.
After the lecture at the New School on the origins of anti-Semitism we had hopped on the same uptown bus, and ended up at a neighborhood bar with sawdust on the floor. In one of those New York moments, I learned that he was my boss’s younger brother. By another coincidence, Peter’s apartment was only three blocks from mine, on East 80th, in one of those sunless East Side apartments with brick walls and hardwood floors. There was no way to make such dim places cozy, and Peter hadn’t tried—everything looked brand new, untouched. We sat and listened to Sinatra. There was some discussion about the difference between cold digital sound, and the other warm sound—was it vacuum?
Grateful that I did not have to endure an evening of Led Zeppelin, I said, “It does sound warm.”
And here we were, the day after, at a Greek coffee shop around the corner from my office. In hindsight, an unromantic choice; the neighborhood was fairly seedy.
Peter’s meal-ordering process was complex and time-consuming. He vacillated between sandwiches and salads. He probed the tired waiter about his culinary options. Eventually, he settled, nervously, on a grilled Swiss and fries, or #15 in coffee-shop lingo. I was relieved to have that part of our meal over.
Still, it was a treat to have lunch with a real companion, and not sit alone at the counter. I felt Peter Greene and I had much in common in the books and ideas department. I envisioned us debating Marxist theory over a glass of chilled white wine, or attending a museum lecture—that sort of thing.
He leaned toward me and said, “Bella, you’re not my type, but I’m really into you.”
“Your type,” I repeated. “I’m not?”
“No, not really,” he said, wiping his wire-rimmed glasses.
Instinct told me when men, especially men like Peter, had a type, the girls in question were tall and blonde, and wore cashmere and pearls. I instantly reviewed all the types I was not: not tall, not short, not blonde, not redheaded, not almond-eyed, not to mention perky or cute. To be sure, it was a long list.
I contemplated my newly discovered identity as a medium-height, medium-weight brunette with no defining features. Looking around, I saw more than a few twenty-something New York brunettes who could have doubled for me in a pinch. Although now that I bothered to look, they were better dressed and thinner than I was.
These unwelcome insights made me glum. “I guess you’re not my type either,” I confessed.
“What do you mean, I’m not your type? What’s your type?” he snapped.
I considered his question as the waiter placed plates on the table. My college boyfriends had nothing in common, apart from the obvious fact that they ended up as ex-boyfriends. But being an ex-boyfriend hardly made them a type, or at least I hoped not, since one of them seemed downright psychotic.
“Hmm, maybe the kind of man who doesn’t have a type. I think that’s my type.” “That’s the problem with feminism. Here I am, trying to give you a compliment, and you’re twisting my words,” Peter said, in true debating-team style.
“Well, that’s the problem. I mean, a compliment is, ‘You’re wonderful,’” I pointed out. “A compliment is, ‘You look nice in that sweater.’ That’s a real compliment. Anyway, I’m not a feminist, whatever you think a feminist is.”
I delicately plucked a single French fry from his plate, as if to prove the point.
He pounced on my logic. “What do you mean you’re not a feminist? You’re just being facile. That is what women always do to evade the issue.”
“You see, it’s all about work. I think most feminists like to work and I hate work,” I said. “Some women like it, which is fine. But I wish I could just hang out or see lots of movies. Maybe I would work just one day a week, you know, for fun, like in a museum, or maybe not, maybe just read a lot of novels. You know what I mean?”
My rambling had grated on Peter. “That’s not the point. The point is, you, you’re taking it personally like I was insulting you. So, you’re not Marilyn Monroe. I came downtown to tell you what a great night I had.”
I returned to my Greek salad, more sanguine than before. No girl could be Marilyn Monroe, after all—and it tickled me that Peter had resurrected her in the era of free love.
“Not that I want to marry you,” he continued, drowning his French fries in a pool of ketchup. “Don’t get the wrong idea.”
The coffee shop had turned noisy with so many waiters shouting— “Number fifteen! Fourteen! Whiskey dry!”—so, it was hard to make myself heard. “My guess is this coffee shop’s filled with men who don’t want to marry me. Come to think of it, all of Manhattan’s filled with men who don’t want to marry me.”
I boomed so loudly that an older woman eyed me with alarm. She probably thought I was a hardened floozy.
“So now what? You’re angry because I’m not proposing? I’m not crazy or something where I’m going to ask a girl I hardly know to marry me. You don’t expect that, do you?”
“Calm down, I don’t want to marry you,” I said. I meant to emphasize the “marry” part like an ardent feminist, which I was not, but who cared? Instead, I ended up broadcasting the “you” part like an outraged lover.
I was sorry for my shrill tone. I had no license to tell Peter Greene that sex without love is just sex, even if you play music in the background, even if you think it’s great sex, it’s still just sex; and men and women either move closer or further apart; there’s no standing still. Who was I to tell anyone anything?
Peter jumped in before I could apologize. “So you don’t want to.” He now acted as if he had proposed on bended knees, and I had cruelly rejected him.
“No, I do not,” I answered. “We’re just having lunch. That’s all. We’re not talking about marriage. Actually, we don’t even have a relationship, not a real relationship. Nothing’s happening here, nothing.”
And it was just then that I noticed dark-eyed Jeremy Levy, who worked two floors above me—I had spent months trying to catch his attention. He was ordering a sandwich, and he heard me turning Peter down, or so he thought. And this time, Jeremy looked at me and smiled, the barest hint of a smile, but it was enough for me.
Peter said, “So you’re into someone else?”
I shrugged helplessly.
“Unbelievable,” Peter said, “you are un-be-lievable. My sister said you were crazy, like maybe on drugs, always tripping into things and coming in late, and making excuses for yourself. She said you had problems and you have all these headaches, and you’re always talking about the Holocaust. She said you might be crazy.”
That was news, although it should not have been. I had hardly proved a model employee. Rita had hidden her disdain well, though. She had been polite. That much, I had to grant her.
I said, “I didn’t know—about Rita, I mean.” I knew the part about myself all too well. I knew that part better than anyone.
Peter said, “Yeah, she wants to fire you, but she can’t think of a reason. She’s had a hard year and she really needs someone she can count on.”
“A hard year,” I repeated, mostly to myself.
Peter did not walk me back, which was just as well. I felt trapped between an apology and a complaint, without much feeling behind either. Besides, who knew what he might repeat to Rita, who had cast me as a lunatic—and a lazy lunatic, too.
After lunch, I marched into Rita’s office. As usual, she was wearing a fabulous designer suit and bold, colored earrings. “So you don’t like me, and you think I’m crazy,” I said, not repeating the lazy part, since that was true.
She finished licking an envelope. “I do like you. I just told Peter that you’re doing a lousy job. You’re smart—there’s no reason you couldn’t do a better job. But I get it, the work’s boring and the pay’s not good. But, Bella, these writers depend on us.”
I made a lame gesture of apology. “I’ll try, really, I will.”
Rita calmly licked another envelope and said, “Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. Anyway, it seems you spend all your time chasing Jeremy Levy. But I guess he doesn’t mind.”
“He doesn’t?” I asked, forgetting all about the job and Peter, and even Rita.
“Not from what I can tell,” she said, opening another file.
Minutes later, I was standing in Jeremy’s doorway. For a moment, I almost lost my nerve—I saw a tennis racket, and I was hopelessly un-athletic. Maybe Jeremy needed a doubles partner for a girlfriend. But I forged ahead.
“Do you have a type?” I asked—I could not say his name, it felt too soon.
He weighed my question like a riddle. He pretended to scribble a few notes, and I moved close behind him so he could smell my perfume. Then he stopped his scribbling and we faced one another. We were only inches apart. His dark eyes looked less restless than usual, less distracted.
“Women. Women are my type,” he said. And then he smiled at me, just as he had earlier in the coffee shop.
“So, I could be your type,” I said, “I mean, with such broad parameters.”
A Closet Feminist is a story about the setbacks and successes of Bella Hirsch. A young woman who finds herself navigating the expectations of her culture, her career, her relationships, and her family & friends. As she learns more about herself and realizes what she wants doesn't have to match anyone's expectations.
The story starts out slow and it was difficult to get grounded in the story world. Which makes it's tough to see where the story is headed. In other words, there's a lot going on but nothing happening. The story evens out as Bella goes to grad school. The story makes a few time jumps from one paragraph to the next and from chapter to chapter that feels a bit jarring and takes you out of the story as you try to figure out what's happening and how much time has passed for the characters.
Bella leans towards unlikeable, as many of her decisions are too focused on the men in her life. We watch as Bella begins to question why she's still giving some much to her partner in an unbalanced relationship only to move onto a relationship that appears to take a greater toll on her and cost even more. Her character grows in the end and it's nice to see how even some bad choices can still lead you to the right places in the end. Many of the characters were forgettable, but a few were standouts.
Outside of her romantic relationship, Bella's friendship with fellow grad student Jessica and Sky a film director shows what supportive relationships look like. Jessica helps Bella, Bella helps Jessica and they're both better for having the other in their life. Sky sees her worth even when she doesn't and respects her.
If Bella's the type of character you're drawn to, it's worth it to stick with her as she goes from a perceived trainwreck towards self-assuredness. If you're not interested in reading about characters having affairs you should skip this one.