false 6150439 1416527567 9781416527565 3 3 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6150439.How_to_be_Single 6841 Liz Tuccillo 6438 1447 3 0 false Sat Jul 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jan 28 06:35:44 -0800 2009 Sun Jul 19 11:48:36 -0700 2009
She works as a publicist, promoting sickening self-help books all about loving yourself, meeting the man of your dreams and so on. After a night out that ends with embarrassing herself with bar-top dancing and Serena in hospital having her stomach pumped, they're told by two French women that they have no pride. This starts Julie on a bout of introspection into the situation and fate of single women around the world.

She pitches a book idea to her boss on the topic of How to be Single and begins a round-the-world research trip, landing in France, Italy, Brazil, Australia, Bali, China, India and Iceland, talking to women and men about what it's like being single in their country and their attitudes towards dating and marriage.

Meanwhile, back home, her friends are struggling to deal. Alice meets a man who loves her and provides her with everything she needs, except she doesn't love him; Serena finds that celibacy makes her horny and has an affair with a Kiwi swarmi; Ruby volunteers at an animal shelter and gives dogs their last hug before being euthanised, leading her to develop peculiar ideas about people; and Georgia struggles to balance dating and her two young kids, with disastrous results.

It seems like Julie is in for more than she bargained for too, especially after meeting handsome and charming - and married - French businessman Thomas, who has an "arrangement" with his equally stunning wife. All her fears and insecurities surface, and her cynicism regarding love takes a real battering.

This was a surprisingly difficult read for me. When I started it, I really didn't like it - my biggest problem being an inability to relate. I simply don't get the topic, "how to be single". There's very little about Julie and her friends that's familiar to me, and, really, what does it mean, how to be single? Even after finishing the book and liking it a whole lot more than when I started, I still don't get it.

It's a very character-driven book, which I like, but again I couldn't really relate to their problems, especially since they were all so economically independent and having no money is my biggest problem - reading about rich people moaning about their love lives has always alienated me.

BUT, but I did warm to them, especially Julie who narrates her sections - the other characters' stories are retold in third person, an unusual device but it worked for The Chocolate Lovers' Club and it worked here too. This felt almost autobiographical, especially Julie's sections, though I think that's mostly because Tuccillo did actually go to all these countries and interview all these people - some even have the same names in the book, like the Icelandic women.

It also reads somewhat non-fictional at times, even though it gets very personal. This is Tuccillo's debut novel, her first book (He's Just Not That Into You) being non-fiction. It could be the memoir feel to it.

While the book has many funny moments, some exciting ones and a few heart-warming ones, it's ultimately surprisingly depressing. It's chick-lit with a conscience. Sadly, this conscience steers miles clear of some perfect moments for political critique. When she goes to China because she's heard there's a woman drought, she comes up with a bizarre reason for this instead of the widely accepted one, that women are aborting or abandoning female babies because sons are more valuable. This was disappointing. She also didn't delve far into the poverty in India, though it upset her. The author's voice often mixed with Julie's, in moments of assertion and when the story touched on "real" issues. Again, that memoir feel.

It did make me feel crappy by the end of it, which makes me a bit resentful since I'm not single and was never bothered by being single when I was. (Then again, I'm not thirty-eight either.) I was pleased Julie went to Australia - she even goes to Tassie! (my home state) - but disappointed by what she found there. The men in Sydney were all dating women who were "half their age and add four", was their method, while the single women of the same age skulked about in the shadows. The men were bastards, really, but I could believe it of them, which saddened me. I was ticked by her description of Hobart - a city where I lived for over four years - as a quaint colonial town with only one pub where everyone knows everyone. And the woman she met there made me queasy.

Which leads me on to the stereotypes. Naturally, they're there. But you have to remember that most stereotypes, like clichés, become what they are because they're based on some truth. Julie's very open about the tendency to generalise, so I didn't worry much about it - as she said, she's only seeing and hearing a slice of a population.

This book suffers from being a non-fiction book squished into the format of a chick-lit novel, and a chick-lit novel burdened with the depressing and dismal situation of a non-fiction book. It's a bit of an identity crisis really, which I didn't really mind - it's more that these women really got to me by the end and were a real mood-killer. Also, I'm not sure whether, by the end, there's really any resolution or revelation or anything - I didn't care for the self-love message that Julie succumbed to, not after reading Generation Me, though that's mostly because it was poorly expressed. What I mean is that, I don't think the novel really managed to explain how to be single, or what that even means.]]>