Products are independently selected by our editors.
We may earn an affiliate commission from links.
The then-47-year-old writer was starved for contact.
Photo: Jamie Magnifico
Id been so alone and so untouched, MacNicol says.
I just wanted to be alive.
The memoir is perhaps more aptly described as atale, given its compressed, month-ish timeline.
(It made me cry on a plane.)
Even the verbiage is crucial: in the recent past, she might be described as unmarried and childless.
Lets have one thats like,Im just being hedonistic and naked and eating whatever I want.
I have found most of what were told about getting older to be a lie, she says.
And Im like,really?
I feel like Im a 14-year-old boy.
Users self-identify by produce: Cherry is to find your other half.
Grape is for a glass of wine with no trouble.
Why would I ever second-guess this about myself?
I know what I enjoy.
I know how to enjoy myself, which, at 25, I didnt.
And I said, Yes, exactly, she recalls with a contented smile.
Though this feels too simplistic.
What really irks this woman, Ive come to realize, is that I appear to be enjoying myself.
Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but mostly fine.
Through irresistible stories and never-earnest preaching, MacNicol argues that marriage isnt the only path to family.
(Is it telling that its virtually never available to stream?)
She most definitely seems to be enjoying herself.
Its not just the nudity of the picture, MacNicol argues.
Its connected to the framing of pleasure.
When given the choice to change the cover, however, MacNicol didnt budge.
Across our lunch table, the waitress brings dessert: a tin of warm cinnamon sugar doughnut holes.
Delicious, MacNicol says, biting into one.
I agree: delicious.
Im Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris
BOOKSHOP
