The Last Single Woman in America by Cindy Guidry

Title: The Last Single Woman in America
Author: Cindy Guidry
ISBN-13: 978-0525950523
Publisher: Dutton Adults/Jan 2008
Pages: 290/Hardcover

As I mentioned in my previous post, I got this book via Dewey's post. This is a collection of essays, which are written in dry humour. Cindy Guidry has written about the most serious things with a wit that is wry and makes us love the book instantly. She is outrageously funny, has the ability to laugh at herself and draws vivid pictures of people and places she comes in contact with, idiosyncrasies and all.

Cindy Guidry is a former film executive living in Los Angeles. In the space of forty days, she loses her job and a potential husband. Infact the three men she has been going out with one after the other, all have been impregnating women behind her back!

She finds herself happily single despite advice from her mother, so-called well-wishing friends and a neighbour, Tomas who is always around to ask himself in for dinner. She discovers that men are the new women who don't have time for women as they are too busy preening themselves like women. Narccissitic males? Cindy explores the internet, finds happiness in her CD collection and gets a love letter in the form of poetry from an Indian gas station attendant when she least expected.

Although Cindy has written this with lots of humour, however it touches many grounds that we singles feel. It questions why is it so?. Are we choosy? Do we have high standards? Should we lower it? Is being married and having kids should be the ultimate goal? Why aren't there potential partners for singles? Why is a woman who is over forty and single is considered to be left on the shelf, while a forty plus man is still looking?

These essays ask a lot of questions, answer a few on the way and her characters are funny, outrageous and very interesting. She has put life into her writing. Her wicked sense of humour has made this book very readable for single women (and single men too!) all over the world. There is pain, tenderness, power and so much truth in what she writes. As a writer, I suppose she has arrived.