I\u2019m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself <\/p>\n
Author: Glynnis MacNicol <\/p>\n
ISBN-13: 978-1785123627<\/p>\n
Publisher: Leap<\/p>\n
Guideline Price: \u00a310.99<\/p>\n
Glynnis MacNicol is far from the only person who spent the pandemic in complete isolation, but her experience \u2013 16 months alone in a tiny Manhattan apartment as a 46-year-old single woman without children \u2013 was especially punishing. <\/p>\n
When she is offered the chance to sublet a friend\u2019s apartment in Paris, she books a flight right away and announces on her arrival that she has \u201cmoved into an abundance mindset\u201d. In France, she swiftly begins hooking up with men she matches with on a dating app called Fruitz, having felt starved of touch for too long. <\/p>\n
Subtitled \u201cOne Woman\u2019s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris\u201d, this somewhat self-indulgent memoir of a liberated middle-aged woman\u2019s adventures might appeal to lots of readers, but it wasn\u2019t really my cup of tea. In fact, I would have preferred a nice cup of tea over reading about MacNicol\u2019s ceaseless need for self-gratification.<\/p>\n
Her unapologetic self-possession is impressive, her confidence admirable. And yes, women who embrace this kind of sexual agency are often unfairly judged, especially compared to men. Irrespective of that caveat, her choices appear risky, reckless, wildly trusting and self-indulgent \u2013 even without factoring in a global pandemic.<\/p>\n
There are jarring tonal shifts throughout. In one chapter, MacNicol recounts a rough night out when she abandoned her friends and got lost in the Bois de Boulogne. Her sulky narration \u2013 \u201cI don\u2019t want to stay. I don\u2019t want to have a bad night. I don\u2019t want to not have fun. And I don\u2019t have to not have fun. So I leave. And now how to get myself out of the forest\u201d \u2013 is oddly affecting. Just as the tension begins to build, she veers wildly off course: \u201cIt\u2019s shocking to understand how recent the notion of time travel is.\u201d The digression breaks the spell entirely.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, she comes off as overly enamoured of herself. \u201cIn every pool I swim, my stroke is remarked upon, my sharp flip turns marvelled at,\u201d she writes. On seeing an old video of herself: \u201cI watch it again and again and stare at my own beauty, which leaps off the screen at me \u2026 My jawline, my eyes, my hair. I find myself coveting myself.\u201d Moments like these come across less as reflections on ageing or self-acceptance and more as unchecked self-regard.<\/p>\n
Even the back cover blurb leans into overstatement: likening MacNicol to Nora Ephron and Deborah Levy, the former a comedic genius, the latter a razor-sharp chronicler of interior lives, is quite a stretch. This book seems written primarily for the author\u2019s pleasure and occasionally forgets that the reader is also there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself Author: Glynnis MacNicol ISBN-13: 978-1785123627 Publisher: Leap Guideline Price: \u00a310.99 Glynnis MacNicol…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-55538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}