The Lonely Hunter
How Our Search for Love Is Broken: A Memoir
-
-
4.0 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
When can we say we’ll be single forever—and that’s okay? One woman questions our society’s pathologizing of loneliness in this crackling, incisive blend of memoir and cultural reporting.
“The Lonely Hunter challenged everything I assumed about the nature of loneliness and what it means to lead an authentic life.”—Doree Shafrir, author of Thanks for Waiting and Startup: A Novel
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Cosmopolitan
One evening, thirtysomething writer Aimée Lutkin found herself at a dinner party surrounded by couples. When the conversation turned to her love life, Lutkin stated simply, “I don’t really know if I’m going to date anyone ever again. Some people are just alone forever.” Her friends rushed to assure her that love comes when you least expect it and to make recommendations for new dating apps. But Lutkin wondered, Why, when there are more unmarried adults than ever before, is there so much pressure to couple up? Why does everyone treat me as though my real life won’t start until I find a partner? Isn’t this my real life, the one I’m living right now? Is there something wrong with me, or is there something wrong with our culture?
Over the course of the next year, Lutkin set out to answer these questions and to see if there really was some trick to escaping loneliness. She went on hundreds of dates; read the sociologists, authors, and relationship experts exploring singlehood and loneliness; dove into the wellness industrial complex; tossed it all aside to binge-watch Netflix and eat nachos; and probed the capitalist structures that make alternative family arrangements nearly impossible.
Chock-full of razor-sharp observations and poignant moments of vulnerability, The Lonely Hunter is a stirring account of one woman’s experience of being alone and a revealing exposé of our culture’s deep biases against the uncoupled. Blazingly smart, insightful, and full of heart, this is a book for anyone determined to make, follow, and break their own rules.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Essayist Lutkin debuts with a brilliant reframing of the cultural narrative around singledom with an impassioned defense of its pleasures. After confiding to her coupled friends at a dinner that she might not date anymore, their responses left her feeling "out of place." At 32 years old and in a culture "built around partnership," she writes, "the hardest part of being single wasn't the quality of my life, it was really this lack of language to articulate the meaning of my own solitude." Determined to resolve her inner conflict, she joined a gym and dove into dating apps. However, countless dates later, Lutkin concluded that "on the other side of trying... more of the same." Armed with insights from psychoanalysts and Sex and the City (where "every character is subjected to humiliations related to being single"), she contends with the stigmas "uncoupled" individuals face, such as that their singleness means there's "something wrong" with them. With sparkling intellect and wit, Lutkin argues that being single can be just as life-giving as companionship, citing research that proves it fosters "personal growth, autonomy, and self-determination." She also offers ways that people can combat loneliness, while calling on society to do the work as well, through better urban planning initiatives and "abolishing punitive systems that create ‘loneliness.' " This work makes enjoyable company.
