Reading Reflections
'I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself' by Glynnis MacNicol
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I have been eager to read Gynnis MacNicol’s book ever since it was whispered in the same breath as All Fours, so basically since last summer, when I read that book and fell head over heels for
.I finally got around to buying a copy a couple of weeks ago when the paperback was released, and it wasn't disappointing. If I had to sum it up in a snappy headline, I’d say it was like Eat, Pray, Love, but with more sex and less praying.
Hooked?! Let’s reflect…
July Book: I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol
First Impressions
As this book had been touted as a perfect read for fans of Miranda July’s All Fours, I was expecting it to contain a lot of sex and an inspirational memoir of freedom and autonomy for a female writer. I was also wondering how the author’s story could be made more universal, given that it is her exploration of a pleasurable month in Paris. As with all memoir, I think you go into it looking for some way to connect with the author and for ideas to carry into your own life.
Opening Lines
‘On Sunday I spend a sunny hour in the Jardin des Plantes, sitting on one of the benches that line the long promenade, under trees that stand like sentinels.’
Story/Plot
This is a memoir of freelance writer Glynnis MacNicol’s month-long trip to Paris in August 2021, just as the borders opened up following the Covid pandemic.
MacNicol, a single freelancer aged forty-six at the time of the memoir, had spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment due to the pandemic lockdown. Being given the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris, in which she had stayed before, she jumped at it.
Desperate for touch and the company of others, MacNicol proceeds to seek pleasure and intimacy, both with close girlfriends and men she meets via a dating app. Her pursuit of pleasure takes many forms, including food, sex, dancing on the Seine, and bike-rides through the midnight streets of Paris. As the city is emptied out of Parisians during August, and as tourists are still not many in number, MacNicol and her friends enjoy peaceful brunches and wander around the near-empty Louvre.
Perhaps initially appearing as a simple envy-inducing memoir of a woman’s enjoyment of Paris, the narrative holds deeper insights into the essential need for touch, and how the pursuit of pleasure is a political act, both a right and a responsibility. As MacNicol shows, enjoying yourself as you are, right now, is not something the world tells you is possible.
It also explores the lives of other women writers of the past, feminist philosophy and the stories we are sold about older women’s bodies and ageing.
Pace
The book moves fairly quickly through the author’s month long stay and is a pretty short read. It was ideal, in fact, for sliding into a bag whilst out and about this month. I have seen some criticism online that MacNicol focuses too much on details such as the food she shares with friends, however I didn’t really find this and the level of description was fine for me.
Themes
A freelance writer, MacNicol explores the precarity of living alone without any financial security in one of the most expensive cities in the world (New York). Balanced out by this, however, is the fact that she is able to spend a month at a time in other beautiful places, such as Paris, which she feels is now her second life.
Having come-of-age prior to the near universal use of dating apps, I am fascinated by MacNicol’s in-depth dissection of ‘Fruitz,’ a popular dating app in Paris during the summer of 2021.
As MacNicol tells the men she connects with, she is mostly here to enjoy herself and just wants to receive pleasure. They are only too happy to discuss this prospect with her, and a lot of her time is spent corresponding with these men on the app. It feels at all times however that she is in control and that she is exploring her own desires through these interactions.
What I loved most about MacNicol’s exploration of pleasure in Paris was her adoration for her own body and all it was capable of. Free of shame, worries over how she looked or what she ate were gone. She simply relished in the touch of her own body and the pleasure of being alive and female in Paris. This was such a refreshing narrative, particularly written from the perspective of a woman in her forties.
Her age, she is keen to point out, is a bonus not a negative. It means she is aware of what she enjoys, and has the confidence in her body and herself to go for it. She has many friends in the city; women of similar ages and professions, who just get it. They understand (and enjoy) being single, child free women, enjoying their lives.
Stand-Out Quotations
“Online dating is a contact sport. Don’t go in if you can’t handle it. You’re not a fucking therapist.”
This was the response from a friend to MacNicol when navigating the many messages received from men wanting her to listen to their marriage woes or issues around open relationships. Men who she wisely chooses to swerve.
On avoiding Instagram:
“I have been relinquished from the scarcity mind-set that drives…basically all things women, I suppose. I’ve moved into an abundance mind-set. It’s easier to experience abundance when you aren’t being bombarded with images of everyone else’s.”
Interestingly, she confesses to taking Instagram off her phone mostly to protect other women who are still unable to travel. She doesn’t want to be the one portraying some pleasure-filled month in Paris while some of her friends are disintegrating under the weight of the lives they are shouldering in the current situation.
On letting go of the need to make all the decisions:
“I’m attempting to contrive my own pleasure, without entirely understanding how I intend to get there. Let someone else do the driving for the moment. That’s what I want. I want someone else to do the thinking.”
In the company of a younger man, MacNicol realises:
“It’s in the face of this expression that I remember something I’ve always known. Not learned. Known. Far from cataloguing the state of your breasts, or your hips, or your tummy, men are mostly just thrilled you’ve taken off your clothes at all. Women’s bodies are beautiful. Truly. All of them. The amount of energy that has gone into convincing us otherwise is extraordinary and telling.”
Final Thoughts
I found the author continually returning to the fact that she had chosen not to follow a more traditional path of marriage and motherhood a little off-putting, and found this same criticism on other reviews of the book.
“As I move through my forties, I’ve found myself becoming increasingly offensive to a certain woman…what really irks this woman, I’ve come to realise, is that I appear to be enjoying myself. I have veered off the narrow path laid out for women to be successful in the world, and it turns out I’m fine. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but mostly fine. Which inevitably throws a question mark at the end of her decisions.”
One of her friends in Paris, Nina, understands this: “We’re an attack on the value system of certain people.”
After an initial irritation at this narrative, I realised that perhaps it was myself who was feeling judged. Perhaps I felt called out because I had chosen the more traditional path, and therefore felt that I needed to defend myself.
I have always been an advocate for women’s broad and varied choices. It is one of the topics I enjoy discussing with my own daughter (who I realised last week turned the age I was when she was born…) and I find the open dialogue of women who have made the choice to remain single and/or child free, a welcome addition to the many ways women choose to live their lives.
It disappoints me when I hear of women judging other women for their life choices, and this includes being judged for choosing the more ‘traditional’ route as well as its opposite. We must also always be cognisant of the fact that for some women, the choice is made for them.
Once I let go of feeling judged, I could fully immerse myself in MacNicol’s discovery of pleasure in Paris following the gruelling year of 2020.
I found myself longing to visit Paris (inevitably), but also feeling emboldened by her appreciation of herself and her body and all that it was capable of. Of the loving and tender ways she looks after herself and ensures that she is unashamed in seeking out the pleasure she deserves.
I think that ultimately, this is something we could all learn from.
Let me know in the comments…
What you’ve been reading (always my favourite part of the monthly reflections!)
Any recommendations for positive memoirs/fiction about middle-aged women.
Whether you’ve read this book, and if so, what you thought.
Talking books is literally my favourite pastime 😂
"enjoying yourself as you are, right now, is not something the world tells you is possible."
And so that is something we must tell ourselves, every day, more than once.
I have recently read "stronger: changing everything I knew of women's strength" by Poorna Bell. Although it's a book focused on strength and sport rather than pleasure, I found it very feminist and insightful on how we are conditioned to see our bodies (by the patriarchy, society etc.) and the disconnect with what healthy women bodies should look like (spoiler alert: not thin!). It's more of an essay than a memoir, but I found it very inspiring.