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Memoirs

I'M MOSTLY HERE TO ENJOY MYSELF

Glynnis MacNicol

One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris

When you're a woman smack in so-called "middle age," you are not promised anything at all other than 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 46, unmarried with no children, spent 16 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 like less of a risk than a necessity. What follows is a decadent, 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 Deborah Levy and Annie Ernaux, 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 expands 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. Glynnis MacNicol is the author of the memoir No One Tells You This and writer and host of the podcast WILDER. She lives in New York City.

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Book Published 2024-06-11 by Penguin Life

Comments

In the impermeable narrative that society has given women about getting older, MacNicol has opened a trap door to a world of pleasures, parties, and power. Her lively, succulent account of seeking joy for the hell of it in Paris is a permanent permission slip for all of us to find it for ourselves, right here, at any age. My highest praise for this book is 'I enjoyed it so much!!' because that's exactly what MacNicol is teaching us to do in all parts of our lives.

I thought I knew pleasure when I met my husband. But reading this book makes me think I should've stayed single in Paris! Finally a model of womanhood beyond kids and marriage, a vision of what it can be to embrace freedom. Every word was a pleasure.

Women today are expected to know and be everything, but at what cost? Are your 20s the only acceptable age to grow and evolve? These are only some of the questions MacNicol brings to the table, as she challenges modern expectations of the right to pleasure and enjoyment and being one's true self in an ever-darkening world. Blending humorous commentary and wit with vivid stories of love, lust, and good food, MacNicol generously invites readers into her Parisian paradise. A fun memoir filled to the brim with humor and vulnerability.

Absolutely triumphant. A rapturous ode to loving yourself through letting others love you, I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol is a decadent buffet of pleasures that adds up to so much more. MacNicol takes us on a Seine-backdropped, art-and-bicycle-packed adventure that goes beyond self-discovery or acceptance, and to a deeper place of real self-love. A beautiful, bold, boisterous literary book for those of us who are longing to be touched - the ones who want to pursue the best life has to offer us, and nothing less.

In I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, Glynnis MacNicol brilliantly cements her writing legacy as the most ardent supporter of living well, especially for women, amid any and all pressure to suppress our natural exhilaration for being alive. MacNicol's memoir is a guide for pursuing your own pleasure in body and spirit, not exactly an example for readers to follow, but certainly an invitation to allow themselves all the same freedoms. This isn't escapism. This is a call to go deeper into what feels most real.