How to be Single: A Novel

Written by Liz Tuccillo

Narrated by Judy Greer

The inspiration for the hit film!

From the coauthor of He’s Just Not That Into You and a former story editor for Sex and the City, How to Be Single is about one woman’s attempts to navigate a world filled with ever-evolving definitions of love.

Julie Jenson is a single thirty-seven-year-old book publicist in New York. When her friend Georgia’s husband leaves her for a samba teacher, she forces Julie to organize a single girls’ night out to remind her why it’s so much fun not to be tied down. But the night ends up having the opposite effect on Julie. Fed up with the dysfunction and disappointments of singledom, Julie quits her job and sets off to find out how women around the world are dealing with this dreaded phenomenon. From Paris to Brazil to Sydney, Bali, Beijing, Mumbai, and Reyjavik, Julie falls in love, gets her heart broken, sees the world, and learns more than she ever dreamed possible. All the while her friends at home are grappling with their own issues—bad blind dates, loveless engagements, custody battles, single motherhood, and the death of a loved one. Written in Liz Tuccillo’s pitch-perfect, hilarious, and relatable voice, How to Be Single is “a summer read that, for once, accurately depicts the hopes, fears, and bad dates of a single woman looking for love” (Parade).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Jun 10, 2008
• ISBN: 9780743569682

Reviews for How to be Single

[thehistorychic · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was a decent read. It was hard to get into but the idea of the book was a good one. Basically a woman in her late-30's decides to figure out how single women all over the world handled being single. She visited France, Australia, India, and a few other places. It was a good idea. Along the way, you also get updates on her friends back in New York (this is where the book was a little thin and harder to read) and their problems with their singledom. If this sounds familiar it is because Liz Tuccillo is one of the writers of the book He's Just Not that into You and also a writer for the show Sex in the City. Her writing is good, there are just parts of the book I did not find entertaining.

[ragdoll74 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Zesty and I went to Costco the other weekend and I bought a lot of stuff. Well, not a lot of stuff, but I was kind of like a kid in a candy store because I'm not a regular Costco shopper. So, for the bookish girl, seeing giant stacks of books incites a certain kind of glee, so of course I piled a bunch of 'off the list books' (ones that we don't publish or that I can't get reading copies for) into my cart. The first one I tackled was Liz Tuccillo's How to Be Single. (Yes, I'm still on the chicklit kick). What a disappointing book. It's stereotypical, bland, relatively plotless and utterly unbelievable.The premise -- five single women in NYC in their mid-to-late 30s love, redemption and self-satisfaction -- falls short of actually driving the action of entire novel, so Tuccillo invents an entirely ridiculous 'adventure' for her main character, Julie Jenson. See, Julie's unhappy being a publicist at a publishing company so she decides, on a whim, to march into the publisher's office and pitch a book about "How to Be Single." Julie will travel the world and meet all kinds of single women from all kinds of different countries and then she'll write a book. It's Eat, Prey, Love in spades. Only it's not because what it means is that Julie, THE MAIN CHARACTER AND NARRATOR, introduces the action and her four best friends who only know one another through her, and then LEAVES THE CITY. But she still TELLS THE STORY.So that means all the stories are told from Julie's point of view, even though she's not anywhere near the action of the other four characters: lawyer Alice (who left her job to be on permanent "man" hunt); Georgia (whose husband recently left her and the kids to take up with a samba teacher); Ruby (overweight and depressed about her dead cat); and Serena (a hippie cook who works for a famous family only to leave to try and become a swami). The whole book is full of situations that are completely and utterly unbelievable. Of course, Julie meets a wonderful man in Paris with only one hitch; he's married, but wait! It's an open relationship! Yawn.And we could run through the bland things that happen to the other four women but it's not worth the energy it would take for my fingers to type it out. Not one aspect of the book (until we get to the VERY end) is about the women living happy and fulfilled single lives. They're hysterical, depressed, somewhat crazed, and on the hunt for the "right" man the entire time. Tuccillo doesn't break down a single cliche or take the story in any remotely original direction. And, I've got to say, it's honestly some of the worst dialogue I have ever read on paper. For the most part, I wasn't remotely interested in what happened to a single one of these women. Because they didn't feel real. They didn't feel passionate. They were stereotypes of women I see in sitcoms. They were Rachel and Monica, Miranda and Carrie, and with none of the quirks that make those characters endearing or original.I have to say too, that the premise of the novel, when you first pick it up, is interesting, and I would have enjoyed it a lot of there was a whiff of these women embracing their single lives and actually growing from beginning to end. I've already given my copy away and I don't want it back.

[mokah25 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reading it now. It's ok. It has some funny moments.

[brianna_h_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Liz Tuccillo deftly captures real women's experiences, thoughts, fears, and feelings in her debut novel How to Be Single. Women who are 25 and already married or who are 38 and single (like the characters in the novel) will both be able to relate to the women portrayed in this book because deep down all women seem to share the same fears whether due to their real current situations or fear of what the future might hold. Ms. Tuccillo truly has a gift when it comes to being able to tap into the fears and anxieties of today's modern women and convey the same in her writing. The fact that Liz Tuccillo really did traverse the globe researching how single women live all over the world adds glitz and fun to the novel. We, the reader, are treated to glimpses of how women live in Reykjavik, Beijing, Sydney, Paris, Rome, Rio de Janiero, and New York. The locales are exotic and the tales heart-wrentching and uplifting. Like Sex and the City (for which Liz Truccillo was Executive Story Editor), How to Be Single is sure to strike a chord with women everywhere.After reading How to Be Single, you will feel like you know Liz and wish that you really did.

[lana · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Just the book I needed to lift me up. So fun!

[dubaireader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Chick-lit with travel.The abreviated audio CD was read by Judy Greer in a rather twee voice that grated at times, but my expectation of chick-lit was somewhat tempered by the travel aspect.Thirty-something Julie decides to travel around the world with a view to writing a book about how single women deal with their situation in various countries.She leaves her four single friends, with all their various problems, and travels from Paris to Rome, India to China, Brazil to Iceland, interviewing single women (very small samples, it must be said!). She manages to fall in love with a married man, experience varied highs and lows during the journey, and returns to New York in a slightly better mental position than when she left.The author did travel a fair bit before writing this novel so the travel aspect should be reasonably accurate, reflecting her own experiences. I fear that the main content that was abridged from my audiobook was possibly a fair chunk of the travel detail, which would have been a shame. However, although I enjoyed listening to this while driving, it's not a book that I shall be in a hurry to read in full.

[lisaflip · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to love this book, I really did, but I didn't in the end. I do love the premise and wished I'd researched and written the book myself. A single woman decides to travel around the world interviewing single women in countries including France, Italy, Brazil, Australia, Iceland, China, etc. to find out what it's like to be single in different cultures. There were some good points made about what it's like to live as a single person but the book did not do it for me. The characters were unbelievable and I wasn't inspired.

[shelleyraec · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Maybe because I have never really been single, I just found this trite. From the perspective of being married, I want to tell these thirty something women to grow up and get over the princess in waiting attitude. I feel like most of the women have completely unrealitic expectations of what love and commitment are. Really if the reason Julie can't get a guy is because she is only a size 6 and has celluite - then how does that explain the hordes of happily coupled/married size 12 and up women?Julie in particular is shallow and unlikeable, even before she decides that her true love lies in an already married man (no matter how open his marriage may be). I mean, really? I am wondering why she even bothered leaving her hotel when "researching" - somehow I think speaking to less than a dozen people in an entire country does not count as thorough investigation.The girls who are left at home are much more interesting - Georgia falling apart in the wake of her husband leaving her, Ruby contemplating single motherhood, Serena acting like a total flake and Alice holding on to an ideal in the face of reality.There were moments in this book - warm and humourous, but overall I think this book is irritating and I am not the least bit suprised that Julie remains single.