By Amy Cohen
Life is not turning out the way New Yorker Amy Cohen expected. She never imagined that she’d be single, childless and motherless at thirty-five years old. Fortunately, Amy is not ready to throw in the towel just yet. Instead, she is clinging to the hope that she is just a late bloomer in life and she sets out to make her life better. She learns to cook. She overcomes her fear of riding a bicycle (which I can totally relate to). She continues her search for a soul mate despite many bad dates and failed relationships. Cohen’s misadventures are easy to relate to and alternate between touching and sad to light and humorous. Her observations on life and love are dead on. Many times I’d be reading along and find myself thinking “I’m just like that!” or “That is so true!”
For example, her thoughts on casual sex:
“…I knew casual sex wasn’t for me. It never had been. I got hurt if someone didn’t call if we’d just kissed. When things didn’t work out with someone I liked, the only comfort was in saying, ‘At least we didn’t have sex.’ People accused me of having high moral values, but the truth was I had a low threshold for pain.”
On one of her exes:
“And while he felt trapped, I felt that I was too much, that the events of my life were more than he could handle, and so I decided not to need anything. I felt as if I started out as an origami bird, one of those simple swans, but I just kept folding myself smaller and smaller, until I was this unrecognizable crumpled wad of paper. But as hard as I tried to make myself tiny, it was still too much for Josh…”
And finally on self acceptance:
“…I’d started to feel that even though I’d lost my ice climber, I was now scaling the snowy mountain myself…In the same way that I never would have imagined that at 35, I’d learn to ride a bike, or that I’d ever be able to roast a chicken, or not completely fall apart after the devastating end to my only engagement, now I knew that anything was possible. I knew this in a way I never had. So much in fact, that I could now answer the question ‘Do you think you’ll be okay?’ with a confident ‘I do.’
I think many women will find pieces of themselves in this well written, hopeful memoir.
Life is not turning out the way New Yorker Amy Cohen expected. She never imagined that she’d be single, childless and motherless at thirty-five years old. Fortunately, Amy is not ready to throw in the towel just yet. Instead, she is clinging to the hope that she is just a late bloomer in life and she sets out to make her life better. She learns to cook. She overcomes her fear of riding a bicycle (which I can totally relate to). She continues her search for a soul mate despite many bad dates and failed relationships. Cohen’s misadventures are easy to relate to and alternate between touching and sad to light and humorous. Her observations on life and love are dead on. Many times I’d be reading along and find myself thinking “I’m just like that!” or “That is so true!”
For example, her thoughts on casual sex:
“…I knew casual sex wasn’t for me. It never had been. I got hurt if someone didn’t call if we’d just kissed. When things didn’t work out with someone I liked, the only comfort was in saying, ‘At least we didn’t have sex.’ People accused me of having high moral values, but the truth was I had a low threshold for pain.”
On one of her exes:
“And while he felt trapped, I felt that I was too much, that the events of my life were more than he could handle, and so I decided not to need anything. I felt as if I started out as an origami bird, one of those simple swans, but I just kept folding myself smaller and smaller, until I was this unrecognizable crumpled wad of paper. But as hard as I tried to make myself tiny, it was still too much for Josh…”
And finally on self acceptance:
“…I’d started to feel that even though I’d lost my ice climber, I was now scaling the snowy mountain myself…In the same way that I never would have imagined that at 35, I’d learn to ride a bike, or that I’d ever be able to roast a chicken, or not completely fall apart after the devastating end to my only engagement, now I knew that anything was possible. I knew this in a way I never had. So much in fact, that I could now answer the question ‘Do you think you’ll be okay?’ with a confident ‘I do.’
I think many women will find pieces of themselves in this well written, hopeful memoir.
2 comments:
First time to your site. Just finished reading the Janine Latus book. I am interested in reading the Late Bloomer's Revolution, after your review. I really enjoy memoir's. You should read the book, A Round-Heeled Woman by: Jane Juska and her follow-up to that book is Unaccompanied Women. Also, the book Five Men Who Broke My Heart by: Susan Shapiro. I think you would like them.
L.
I did enjoy the Susan Shapiro book and I'll definitely check out the other titles you mentioned. Thanks!
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