Unaccompanied Women: Late Life Adventures in Love, Sex and Real Estate is in a Class of Its Own!

What do you do when you're 70, single and a female living in California? Place an ad in the New York Review, seeking companionship, of course! And then write a book about your experiences with the people that respond to that ad! What else?

Unaccompanied Women: Late Life Adventures in Love, Sex and Real Estate, by Jane Juska, is a gutsy memoir about exactly that. This memoir is a sequel to her book A Round Heeled Woman.

In Unaccompanied Women, Juska details her experiences, not only with the people that responded to the ad, but also with the people that have become confessees, mentees and her friends. She interacts with women and men of all ages and relays their stories, whether happy or sad, in this book. Juska herself is an unaccompanied woman. She struggles to find the perfect man to keep her company: he must have the right mix of physical sensuality and raw intelligence, otherwise she will become frightfully bored with him (at least that is what the implication is!). Juska meets these people everywhere; she receives phone calls at home and meets earnest readers at book signings all over the world.

This book is written in simple prose. It is not a novel or a memoir in the sense that the chapters represent sequential steps that move a plot along. The chapters in this book are essays that are linked to each other by the sheer coincidence that the author wrote an ad, which prompted the characters that feature in that particular essay to contact her. I enjoyed Ms. Juska's style of writing. It reminded me of a small, spring brook gurgling down the mountains of Northern New Hampshire. It was young, fresh and flowed quickly and easily. Her stories were easy to follow and her characters were interesting; they were the types of people that anyone would want to meet, share a drink and some stories with in the neighborhood bar. I was also really impressed by Ms. Juska's courage; it takes a lot to expose these particular experiences to the world and she did so in a classy, eloquent manner. Brava!

However, her memoir was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Chapters 14 and 15 offended me, with their anti-Arab undertones. Most of the book was spent whining about how she did not have a man and wanted one so badly, especially because a big rich man would keep her safe and warm (page 208) and would buy her diamond rings (page 126). This all from a woman that claims to be independent and not need a man for anything, except to buy her things that she does not want to spend her own money on. It just seemed hypocritical and selfish in places.

If I had read A Round Heeled Woman first, I may have a greater appreciation for this book. As it stands now, however, I left this book with lukewarm feelings. Your best bet is to get it out of the library!