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131 of 137 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Timeless Quest, June 9, 2003
For decades, the personals section of _The New York Review of Books_ has been a cheerful island of sexuality within an august intellectual setting. Those of us who browse it out of curiosity rather than sincere shopping can't help but wonder how these attempts at finding love turn out. Will the beautiful, brainy SJF, earthmother, find her sweet, brilliant, companionable sexy beast? Will the adventurous, intellectual, DWM, 47, periodontist, photographer, musician, cat-lover find his full-figured woman for passionate sex and scintillating discussions? (I am citing real ads from a recent issue.) Thanks to Jane Juska, we know, quite thoroughly, how one of those ads played out. Juska was watching an Eric Roehmer film in Berkeley, carefully munching her malted milk balls, when she started writing her ad. Carefully budgeting the $4.55-per-word prose, she eventually submitted, "Before I turn 67 - next March - I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me." Her funny, revealing, and smart book, _A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance_ (Villard), shows that the old slogan is quite true: it pays to advertise. If you are not "of a certain age", Juska's title might elude you. It is an old phrase that indicates a woman who is easy to get to go from vertical to horizontal. "My heels are very round," she writes, "I'm an easy lay. An easy sixty-seven year old lay. 'Twas not always so." She had gone through decades of not having a man in her life. This is not just a story of what happened once she placed her ad, but also a memoir of her life so far that led to its placement. She recounts a Midwest upbringing, sad marriage, divorce, single motherhood, teaching high school (and prison) English, her love for the novels of Anthony Trollope, and much more. Of course the main fare is how Juska managed her respondents. She triaged the letters into Yes, No, and Maybe, stacks that proved not to be rigid. Her first encounter, filled with all the worry that would do justice to any virginal adolescent, could not have been worse; the cad had sent an outdated photograph and steals her champagne flutes and her pajama bottoms. Good writing paid off for another: "... a varied syntax sends shivers up and down my spine." She fell in love with a man who only wanted a friend. She had completely successful encounters with a man who was thirty-five. He wrote her that he realized "that there is a somewhat substantial age gap between us (not quite Harold and Maude, but in the neighborhood)" but that age didn't matter for people that mattered to him. He sounds too good to be true, but there isn't any disillusionment at the book's end. There has already been backlash about the book; many would have been better pleased if she had followed the path old ladies are supposed to take and did not admit to any lingering libido. Of course, then there would not have been any book, and then there would not have been as happy and as fulfilled an author. Most readers will be rooting for her, as she grins against the disappointments life and men inevitably hand her. She cannot help loving them, and enjoying in particular their legs, buttocks, and penises, about which she writes with gusto. She may be needy, but she is also frisky and honest. She is neither noble nor pitiable, but simply reluctant to let physical thrills be a part of the past, something that only young people savor. She is brightly appreciative of the intellectual thrills of meeting interesting men, too. This is a unique memoir by a funny and irrepressible lady, and a sexy one as well.
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60 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
5 stars for the writing; 5 stars for bravery; 5 for content, May 14, 2003
Long awaited book since the first reviews and all the hype appeared. Thank goodness she lives in Berkeley, 2 minutes from me, as that means I'll be able to attend a book reading somewhere nearby. The lady's got guts, chutzpah, joie de vivre, etc - - - but most of all, boy, can she write! The narrative arc of A Round-Heeled Woman is framed on Juska's desire for a truly fulfilling sexual relationship for, one may assume, the first time in her life. After decades as a teacher and a single mom, looking old age eyeball-to-eyeball, she leaps into the bizarre world of Personals Ads and comes up a winner. Deeper, however, than the sexual narrative, is the story of her blossoming as a fully-actualized woman. What's not to love about this book? I didn't find anything.
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47 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reading Jane Juska is like talking to a good friend, May 10, 2003
Jane Juska's new book, A Round Heeled Woman, is not just a tale of the results of her advertisement for a sexual relationship with "a man I like". She meets some wonderful and some not so wonderful men, and the reader suffers through the disappointments and rejections and cheers the successes. (And there are several.) Yet it is her narrative of teaching in High School and at San Quentin that is so poignant and shows as much about who she is as does the ad which depicts her as a daring woman who is looking for a connection at long last, a woman who "wants to be touched" . One hopes that she writes another book, and quickly, about her teaching years, all forty of them, and in particular more about her prison students. This book is true and real and very funny and I couldn't put it down. I for one would love to meet this remarkable woman.
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