cover image Single File: How to Live Happily Forever After with or Without Prince Charming

Single File: How to Live Happily Forever After with or Without Prince Charming

Susan Deitz. St. Martin's Press, $0 (317pp) ISBN 978-0-312-02981-4

Syndicated columnist Dietz and Cassidy, a freelance writer, here gather advice, responses from newspaper readers and results of surveys into a step-by-step program directed at helping women who live alone to do so with satisfaction and fulfillment. In a chatty, no-nonsense and enspiriting (sometimes tiresomely so) tone, the authors first encourage the reader to shed the fantasy that marriage will bring happiness, to let go of ``The Man Who Isn't There'' and live ``as if'' she would always be single, finding reward in the options available at the moment. In chapters that consider aspects of modern life--money, social relationships, sex, psychology, appearance--the guide offers exercises, questions and charts that urge the reader toward a thoroughgoing and radical makeover. The discussion of money is particularly useful, with its budget charts and projected interview with a loan officer at a bank. The authors' all-encompassing approach may seem simplistic or naive to sophisticated habitues of the singles' scenes in big cities such as New York or L.A, but there are single women (and men) whose lives may well be substantially enriched by the suggestions, encouragement and compassion here. (June)