Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Flying Solo: Single Women in Midlife

Flying Solo: Single Women in Midlife
reviewed on
Helpful Score: 1


From Booklist
Family therapist Anderson and her coauthors chronicle the ups (mostly) and downs (minimized) of 40- to 45-year-old single women in a manner intended to evoke cheers. Based on a two-year study of 87 women, their book details, more objectively than existing self-help manuals, both the joys and the travails of living alone. Peppering their work with quotes from their subjects, the authors start and end by emphasizing the gift of going solo, and in the middle, they discuss destroying the myths of spinster-ship, overcoming divorce and the never-married syndrome, exchanging fantasies for real-life dreams, dealing with relationships, and managing the chores of everyday living. Their positive outlook is contagious and obliterates the Harvard-Yale-Newsweek contention that single women over 40 have less chance to marry than to be taken hostage by a terrorist. Even Gloria Steinem would approve. Barbara Jacobs