Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by by Kate Bolick

***I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for a review, however, this has not swayed my opinion in anyway***

Goodreads Summary:

“Whom to marry, and when will it happen—these two questions define every woman’s existence.” So begins Spinster, a revelatory and slyly erudite look at the pleasures and possibilities of remaining single. Using her own experiences as a starting point, journalist and cultural critic Kate Bolick invites us into her carefully considered, passionately lived life, weaving together the past and present to examine why­ she—along with over 100 million American women, whose ranks keep growing—remains unmarried.

This unprecedented demographic shift, Bolick explains, is the logical outcome of hundreds of years of change that has neither been fully understood, nor appreciated. Spinster introduces a cast of pioneering women from the last century whose genius, tenacity, and flair for drama have emboldened Bolick to fashion her life on her own terms: columnist Neith Boyce, essayist Maeve Brennan, social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and novelist Edith Wharton. By animating their unconventional ideas and choices, Bolick shows us that contemporary debates about settling down, and having it all, are timeless—the crucible upon which all thoughtful women have tried for centuries to forge a good life.

Intellectually substantial and deeply personal, Spinster is both an unreservedly inquisitive memoir and a broader cultural exploration that asks us to acknowledge the opportunities within ourselves to live authentically. Bolick offers us a way back into our own lives—a chance to see those splendid years when we were young and unencumbered, or middle-aged and finally left to our own devices, for what they really are: unbounded and our own to savor.

My Thoughts:

I want to start off with saying that whom to marry and when it will happen have never defined my existence. I could relate to some of Spinster, but not all. I am not sure I bought the the sweeping generalizations made based off of a hand full of individual women most of whom are dead and therefore can't clarify or explain their positions. This being said, I liked Spinster if for no other reason that it got me thinking about things I may never have thought about otherwise.

Often, I think women my age and older think that we all have the same experiences when it comes to marriage and commitment and then it is those freaks among us who dare to go against the norm. I am not sure this is the case. I do think that women have often been silenced, as pointed out either intentionally or implied in this book. I do think that silence has been misunderstood. In reading this book I examined my own thoughts about marriage and what it means to women as a whole as well as me specifically.

Personally, I never wanted to get married. I found a partner I love and I want to share my life with but marriage wasn't ever something I needed or wanted. Things worked out the way they did because I, just like many of the women in the book, am a pragmatist. Getting married gave me health insurance (in a time before Obamacare), tuition reduction at my University (where my husband works), and rights which are not granted to single people. I wanted my husband, who knows me best, making the hard choices for me if things ever came to that. Many women get married for pragmatic reasons, and many more get married for romantic reasons. In reading Spinster I felt a little judged by the author, but I don't think that was her intent. I think it is hard to write about something so big and yet so personal without offending someone.

I really enjoyed the exploration of single womanhood through the words and lives of female writers. I don't know if Kate Bolick exactly expressed what those writers thought or felt, but ultimately that wasn't the point of her book. Kate was on a journey herself and took the words of others as inspiration. I don't think writers should expect to be fully understood and this book is a perfect example of that. A good book isn't defined by agreement with the author, but perhaps how much the author gets us thinking. We writers never know if someone will fully get our meaning, personally, I love when someone finds something of themselves in my writing.

I thought a lot about this book as I was reading it. I thought a lot about it for weeks after I finished reading it. I re-read several sections before finally sitting down to finish this review. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for an interesting take on a subject that isn't talked about enough or even fully explored. I don't know that her views are universal, they weren't for me, but I think perhaps they may hit home for a lot of women. Examination of society and why we do what we do is always worthwhile.

I want to point out I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

While writing this review I was listening to my upstairs neighbor move out and clean her apartment and a 90's mix on google radio.