Love's Apprentice

by Shirley Abbott

Book Overview

Shirley Abbott's new memoir charts her amorous education as a woman coming of emotional age in the second half of the twentieth century. Love's Apprentice will resonate with every woman who, despite... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395957850
• ISBN13: 9780395957851
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 277 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A story of romance with romance

In this memoir Shirley Abbott she tells her very personal story of her romance with romance. She has always studied great literature and so it is not accidental that the theme of great literary passions run throughout this book, contrasting sharply with her own experiences.The book is a delight to read, full of nostalgic details of the popular culture around her as she grew up in the forties and fifties. It's a painfully honest book as she, with humor and insight, chronicles a lifetime of disappointing romances with strong commentary on the contemporary state of marriage. She comes across as very human and yet imperfect, and her appeal is to everyone who has ever believed in a fairytale.There were times I was impatient with her. She kept waiting for romance to come to her, constantly searching for the perfect man. She looked at herself and her aspirations with humor, but never really took any positive actions. In spite of a career, two children and a marriage, and some tentative experiments with affairs, it took her until her sixties to seem to find that love.This is more than a book about one human being however. It is the story of how the world we live in holds up an idealized version of romance which is echoed in great literature. And how the search for this romance is doomed to failure.The book is hard to put down. I looked forward to reading it and was sorry to see it end. She's a good writer and I appreciate the way her words fall across the page, leading me on and letting me share her life.

Yes Men, we too would benefit from reading this book!

At first glance, this might look like it has more to say to your wife, lover, or sister, but I can assure you it will be worth your time to read this for yourself. AT 50, with two marriages behind me, I found it quite fascinating, and often confirming in regard to what was, and is, going on in my relationships with women. I am, of course recommending it to my therapist giflfriend. I recommend it to you for insigh, style, and grace.

5 stars reserved for Tolstoy and George Eliot, but . . .

I hope Love's Apprentice won't be considered one of the undifferentiated, self-exploiting memoirs that are published by the dozens these days because it is an astonishing book: It is history and literature; witty and poignant; deeply humane, and astonishingly brave. It describes, through example, the facets of both youthful and mature love. Were 5 stars not reserved for my pantheon of Great Writers (Tolstoy, George Eliot, Nabokov), this book would have rated higher. Read it. Tell your friends.

Changes in sexual behavior in last sixty years:

How brave and original, to use one's life in a memoir detailing the remarkable changes in American women's sexual behavior from 1940 to the end of the century. In forceful, elegant prose, Abbott shows what sticks and what doesn't in an Arkansas girl's notion of romance as she metamorphoses into a spirited New York woman -- young, in her prime, and on into what used to be called age. To read this is to be reminded what we've lived through -- or to learn what your mother lived through.