Single Schmingle

How to be Single
Liz Tuccillo
Washington Square Press

So the best thing that I can say about this book is that the cover art let me use purple font as part of this post. Um, yeah. It was that bad.

How to be Single is about a late thirty-something New Yorker, Julie, who decides she's tired of being asked why she is single. She's sexy, and pretty, and has a big-brain and a great job, and the people in her life (excluding her other single girlfriends) can't understand why she can't find a man. Frustrated, Julie buys an around the world ticket and sets off on a trans-global adventure to find out how women in other cultures can be single, happy, and fulfilled.

Julie first goes to France where she learns that a woman must have, above all else, pride. She then goes to Italy. I'm not really clear what she learned there, but she spent a lot of time being wooed by a Frenchman who had followed her from Paris. In Australia she learns that she must love herself. In Bali, she learns to fall in love (with the married Frenchman whose apparently not-so-proud wife hauls her pregant self around the world to bring him back.) In China, Julie learns that the grass is always greener on the other side; Asian men want Western women and Asian girls want Western guys. She also goes to Brazil, to Iceland and then home to America. You get the idea. Once back in the land of the brave, home of the free, Julie decides that relationships just happen and maybe, just maybe, there's a miracle out there for her. Oh barf. One Jimmy Choo out of five.