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Title details for I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol - Available

I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself

One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris

by Glynnis MacNicol
Glynnis MacNicol
Audiobook
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2 of 2 copies available
“A delight, the literary equivalent of a long catch-up with a brilliant friend.” —New York Times
“One of the most talked-about books of the year.” —Gayle King

When you’re a woman of a certain age, you are only promised that everything will get worse. But what if everything you’ve been told is a lie?
Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists and a thirst for long-overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets.
After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged forty-six, unmarried with no children, spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it. Leaving felt less like a risk than a necessity.
What follows is a decadent, joyful, unexpected journey into one woman’s pursuit of radical enjoyment.
The weeks in Paris are filled with friendship and food and sex. There is dancing on the Seine; a plethora of gooey cheese; midnight bike rides through empty Paris; handsome men; afternoons wandering through the empty Louvre; nighttime swimming in the ocean off a French island. And yes, plenty of nudity.
In the spirit of Nora Ephron and Deborah Levy (think Colette . . . if she’d had access to dating apps), I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself is an intimate, insightful, powerful, and endlessly pleasurable memoir of an intensely lived experience whose meaning and insight expand far beyond the personal narrative. MacNicol is determined to document the beauty, excess, and triumph of a life that does not require permission.
The pursuit of enjoyment is a political act, both a right and a responsibility. Enjoying yourself—as you are—is not something the world tells you is possible, but it is.
Here’s the proof.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 11, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593908952
      • File size: 209147 KB
      • Duration: 07:15:43

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 29, 2024
      The jubilant latest from MacNicol (No One Tells You This) details her transformative summer in the City of Light. After spending the height of the Covid-19 pandemic anxious and alone in her New York City apartment, a 47-year-old MacNicol jumped at the opportunity to sublet a friend’s Paris apartment in 2021. She was eager for a change of scenery and an opportunity to live as “a woman who wasn’t required to ask permission. Who could do as she pleased.” In Paris, MacNicol ate indulgently, found lovers via dating apps, made new friends, and eventually came to view the city as “a mirror that has allowed me to see my entire self and... tak enormous pleasure in the wholeness of that person.” By and large, MacNicol’s escapades come across as empowering, though some may wince at her shallow description of the app-facilitated dating world as a “meat market.” She’s especially incisive when comparing dating at midlife to gaslighting—no matter how good one actually feels, she argues, “everyone and everything” insists that getting older means feeling worse. It adds up to an exhilarating account of finding a new lease of life. Agent: Lucy Carson, Friedrich Agency.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      In her writing and narration, Glynnis MacNicol captures the vivacious spirit of her visit to Paris 2021. As she describes fleeing the pandemic isolation of New York City, she expresses her feelings of deprivation and her readiness for her annual month in France. She is bent on satisfying hedonistic desires and achieving renewed freedom. Once there, she emphasizes sensory details of food, bike riding, dancing, and sex, continually making clear how savoring these joys fills the void that preceded them. Her carefree tone fits her memoir's wit and humor, though she pauses now and then to express deeper insights on being a woman not typified in society, on the vast history of women not given their due, and on feeling at ease with maturing. S.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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