I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself

One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris

De: Glynnis MacNicol

Narrado por: Glynnis MacNicol

Duración: 7 h y 15 m

Resumen del Editor

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.

©2024 Glynnis MacNicol (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

One of W Magazine’s Best, Most Talked-About Books of 2024

One of Romper’s 12 New Books On Our Summer Reading List

One of Goodreads’s Readers’ Most Anticipated Summer Books

“A journey of radical pleasure filled with good friends, good food, good wine, and good sex. . . . MacNicol finds purposeful, decadent joy beyond the confines of society’s expectations.”—W Magazine

“This book is [MacNicol’s] account of finding pleasure—and company—on her own terms, a celebration of friendship, food, and sex that will make every reader wish they had a friend with an apartment in Paris and the freedom to truly enjoy it.”—Romper

“The subtitle says it all, really: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris. . . . Banging away at the myth that middle-aged women can’t have fun, MacNicol’s odyssey is filled with friends, food, sex, and night swimming—all in the wake of a global pandemic.”—Goodreads