Spinster

Starred review from February 16, 2015
In this powerful memoir, Bolick, a cultural critic and contributing editor to The Atlantic, takes an unusual approach to telling her life story, by focusing on her five “awakeners”: great women of the past whose work and experiences inspire her to build the life she wants. Bolick learns from the example of essayist Maeve Brennan, columnist Neith Boyce, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, novelist Edith Wharton, and social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Bolick delves into the history of her awakeners while rounding out each of their individual narratives with her personal experiences. She also reflects on current expectations of women and marital status, backing up her musings with a handful of statistics and facts. Bolick’s intense and moving combination of personal, historical, and cultural narratives will inspire readers—especially women—to think about what they want their own lives to be, and how close they are to their goals. Agent: Tina Bennett, WME.

February 1, 2015

Despite the subtitle, Bolick's (contributing editor, Atlantic) debut is neither a how-to nor a why-you-should. Rather, it's a thoughtful examination of the author's own desires and fears about living alone through her own history and the lens of the experiences of other straight, white women writers of the past. She seems to intend her example as emblematic of the broader cultural moment. On that level the account falls short, since it largely fails to engage with topics of race, class, public policy, and other major cultural influences on the changing role of American marriage. But Bolick owns her background and issues, and this book may be a sympathetic read for other straight, white, middle class, intellectual women of her generation who struggle to forge meaningful companionships without being defined by them. The author doesn't so much reach a conclusion as peter out at the present. A pat-sounding ending says the greater meaning of spinsterhood can be reached in or out of relationships, but it rings hollow in the face of the author's life history of fleeing otherwise functional relationships to attain this self-determination. VERDICT A good choice for public libraries with a significant single patron base, readers interested in feminism, and academic women's studies collections. [See Prepub Alert, 7/28/14.]--Meredith Schwartz, Library Journal

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