Max Holding On

Through a collection of comedic personal stories and essays we get to know Max Holding, a single New Yorker, just passed her 30th birthday whose life hasn’t changed much since those early post college years. She’s stuck.

Max Holding On is modern, female centric story-telling. It contradicts what you know about chick lit. Max is a single woman in her early 30’s, who isn’t obsessed with men, marriage, sex, babies, career or losing five pounds. This isn’t a “woman’s search for identity in the crazy modern world” this is a story about a human quest for meaning and connection in the face of psychological obstacles. Less Bridget Jones, more Larry David starring in a modern comedic version of Odysseus in the body of a 30 year-old Alicia Silverstone.

At the beginning of the series she is the owner of a struggling talent agency called Extra Virgin where she represents unknown actors for bit parts on TV and commercials. Her world consists of her two hapless employees, Ted and Wendy, her self-absorbed art-dealer boyfriend, Jake, her distant neuro-scientist sister, Kennedy, her fickle dog, Pickles and her eccentric parents back in Salem, Massachusetts. The stories focus on Max’s daily struggle to find meaning and connection in a city as chaotic externally as she is emotionally.

The stories/posts Max writes about her adventures are interspersed with letters she writes to her deceased sister, Lanie, the one person she confides in. In the course of the series it becomes clear that Max’s ability to move her life forward hinges on resolving the childhood issues that are the source of her neurosis and misperceptions of the world.