Living Solo

by Adrienne Salinger

This may be the first generation that recognizes living alone as a legitimate choice rather than a declaration of defeat. People who live alone constitute approximately one-quarter of all North... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0836267532
• ISBN13: 9780836267532
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
• Length: 106 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.5" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

another great book

If you haven't read Adrienne Salinger's 'In My Room' you must! While this is really good, 'In My Room' is even better!

Solo & Free

Even though the title of this book is Living Solo, not all of these people are "solo". When you live alone, it's all about you. Everything in your space has meaning, everything is intentional. There are no compromises, which is very freeing, and you can be as eccentric as you want to be. You do as you please and don't really have to think much about what anyone thinks. If I want to eat cereal for dinner every night and eat it over the sink, who cares? One of my favorite "quotes" from this book is from a man named Sam McMillon who summarizes Living Solo: "Do you realize living alone, you can get up at three o'clock in the morning, you don't have nobody? You don't have to tip on your tip-toes. You can turn the TV on. Ain't no way in the world you'd be lonesome by yourself." Amen to that!

Capturing the facades and inner lives of solo livers

Using a 4x5 camera with strobe over six months, Adrienne Salinger has captured the candid, intimate lives of fifty of the over 26 million Americans who live solo. Some of the subjects live alone by choice and others by circumstance. Some will be alone in the short term, others, you expect, will live alone forever. Growing up, Salinger loved to read about Pippi Longstocking, the character who lived alone by her own rules. Living solo, she knew, means that everything remains where you put it when you return home, you can eat over the sink, and you can swig beverages from the bottle. The essays that accompany each photo illuminate the subject with great intimacy. Eight of my favorite photos were those of Amy, who sits lonely in a bedroom of lively, bold colors; Bruce, a manager of retirement homes, who sits before a large painting of a chinese takeout container and discusses identity, estrangement, and keeping kosher; Chika, and aspiring musician in a run-down room; Dan, a former employee of Oprah, stands in his kitchen and talks of self-esteem and past Jewish boyfriends; Elvira, age 88, a former model talks of her red convertible from her regal yet sensible plastic coated chair; Eva, age 86, stands erect in her immaculate kitchen and talks, maybe non chalantly, of Auschwitz and her husband's recent suicide; Joan, in a red couch of luxury talks of widowhood and starting over; and Joan, standing before a large closet and bags of shoes talks of a Long Island childhood.