How to Be Single
A Novel
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- USD 7.99
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- USD 7.99
Descripción editorial
It's the most annoying question and they just can't help asking you. You'll be asked it at family gatherings, weddings, and on first dates. And you'll ask yourself far too often. It's the question that has no good answer. It's the question that when people stop asking it, makes you feel even worse: Why are you single?
On a brisk October morning in New York, Julie Jenson, a single thirty-eight-yearold book publicist, is on her way to work when she gets a hysterical phone call from her friend Georgia. Reeling from her husband's announcement that he is leaving her for a samba teacher, Georgia convinces a reluctant Julie to organize a fun girls' night out with all their single friends to remind her why it is so much fun not to be tied down.
But the night, which starts with steaks and martinis and ends with a trip to the hospital, becomes a wake-up call for Julie. Because none of her friends seems to be having much fun right now: Alice, a former legal aid attorney, has recently quit her job to start dating for a living; Serena is so busy becoming a fully realized person that she can't find time to look for a mate; and Ruby, a curvy and compassionate woman, has been mourning the death of her cat for months.
So, fed up with the dysfunction and disappointments of being single in Manhattan, Julie quits her job and sets off to find out how women around the world are dealing with this dreaded phenomenon. From Paris to Rio to Sydney, Bali, Beijing, Mumbai, and Reykjavik, Julie falls in love, gets her heart broken, sees the world, and learns more than she ever dreamed possible. Back in New York, her friends are grappling with their own issues—bad blind dates, loveless engagements, custody battles, and single motherhood. Through their journeys, all these women fight to redefine their vision of love, happiness, and a fulfilled life.
Written in Liz Tuccillo's pitch-perfect, hilarious, and relatable voice, How to Be Single is the ultimate novel for the adventurer in us all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sassy coauthor of He's Just Not That into You and former executive story editor for Sex and the City stays on familiar ground for her energetic fiction debut. It follows the dating lives of five single New York women, one of whom, narrator Julie, is writing a book about how bachelorettes across the world manage. A Yahoo-sponsored trip sent Tuccillo traveling the world interviewing women in preparation for her novel; Julie embarks on a similar journey while her four friends duke it out on the New York dating scene. The subsequent stories of courtship, marriage and romantic expectations from Julie's travels are revealing and compelling, but the narrator's interviews quickly give way to her own international affair. The friends back home engage in familiar behavior: the postdivorce fling, the forbidden workplace romance, the comfortable but boring relationship and the quirky pet as substitute-boyfriend. The women's plucky points-of-view are nicely intermingled, with Julie as the woman who ties them all together in Carrie-like fashion. Occasional shifts to issues like poverty in India, however, work against the book's strengths.