My sister and I had watched this movie and I found it to be somewhat entertaining. We all know the books are better than the movies so I decided to read the book. The two are not the same...
The book was SO much better. It brought up a lot of questions, but still read as a story. As a single person I found myself going "hmmm" quite often.
Basically the book is about Julie Jenson, a book publicist, who decides she's wasting her life and realizes that it could be a rut she and her friends are in because none of them seem very happy. She decides women in other cultures seem to have it all together and decides to pitch a book idea to her editor. She is going to travel the world and figure out how women around the world deal with the phenomenon of being single. Throughout the process she entangles herself in a whirlwind romance that has her questioning everything. She also both loves and hates the situation she has found herself in.
I was surprised by some of the answers to the questions. I would have thought one of the biggest fears of being single is dying alone...and it was one of the answers. But not all of the answers. They talked about meeting someone and having certain expectations, being forced to marry (FYI not at all what has been portrayed as a generalization with regard to the Indian culture), romantic love, projections about a relationship-what you want them to be and yourself to be, the issue of friends with benefits, who initiates what, influences, meeting someone and what your first thoughts are, do you just dive in or do you keep looking for the love of your life?
I found it interesting some of the viewpoints of women from other parts of the world. For example, some women felt they needed to initiate things because men are "lazy and shy." I don't know about you but this is not my first thought of a guy...well the shy part at least. Some areas the women only wanted to date American men and others loathed American men. In Australia the ratio of women to men is craziness; which then leads to a totally different lifestyle for those women.
From an anthropological point of view I found it fascinating and worth the read.
Happy reading!
Judi
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