Title: Table for One
Author: Caro Saracho
Translator: Sharmila Bhushan
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 158
I received this Advance Review Copy from Penguin Random House SEA in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you Penguin Random House and Chaitanya Srivastava for this amazing opportunity!!
I’ve been single for many years now, something that seems to be more of an issue for others, than it is for me.
BLURB
For many years we’ve been told that women need to get married and have kids to be happy. Society requires us to have a partner to be considered ‘normal’. But some of us want mature relationships, where what is normal is saying what you think and acting accordingly. Learn how to fully enjoy work, parties and friends regardless of luck and loss in love. Find out how to live with high self-esteem and a disappointment-proof attitude. Table for One explains all this and more. It reads like a confessionary with all sorts of fun situations where misunderstandings and tragedy intertwine to really get you laughing. With this book, you’ll realise that happiness is in your hands.
It’s time for us to change our perception, to rid ourselves of all such ideas, which were never ours to begin with, and which, in fact, completely undermine the fact that we are single, free and happy. If we learn to be our own heroines and understand that being single is, in fact, a superpower, we’re going to be able to take better decisions, to remember what we want and know that we deserve, and refuse to settle for anything less than that, no matter how comforting or tempting it may seem.
REVIEW
Table for One is a Spanish book written by Caro Saracho which is translated into English by Sharmila Bhushan. This is a non-fiction book which is majorly written for women who are unapologetically single and would like to live life like any other human being who has married or is in a relationship. The author focuses on the ordeals faced by women who are single, especially after a particular age. If you are reading it from a third person’s perspective, the entire idea of this book might seem totally alien to you but there are a lot of women who undergo all these difficulties mentioned in this book on a daily basis.
The best part about this book is, the author herself being a thirty-one-year woman who has been single for a long time, has meticulously penned down her first-hand personal experience on- how society views single women, how she has embraced herself and how she doesn’t feel the need for someone else’s presence in her life to make her feel whole. Her writing is genuine, real and relatable.
This book is for anyone who has been single or feels overwhelmed by the pressure exhibited by the society to get a boyfriend or get married before the set timeline. Table for one will give you all the reasons why you shouldn’t settle for anything less. Here the author talks about the importance of self-love, she emphasises, only if you love yourself wholly you will be able to love someone else or someone else will be able to love you.
This is an extremely short book but within the span of 150 odd pages, the author was able to change and nurture the mindset of the readers about relationships and marriages for good. Her real-life personal experience and anecdotes made the book all the more relatable. The kind of emotional blackmail our parents make us undergo whenever they see your friend or a cousin with a child. Their yearning to become grandparents, and their anxiety about having an unmarried daughter. Suddenly how all your male friends turn into potential husband materials in the eyes of your parents. All of these things have been written authentically and sensibly.
The author also clearly speaks about different kind of women out there and their psychological behavioural patterns when it comes to relationships. With the help of Doly Mallet’s “Biting Apples and kissing frogs” book, she compares it with our favourite yet problematic Disney princesses. She categorises them as The Cinderellas, The Auroras, The snow whites et cetera.
At the end of the book, the author has also given certain challenges to the readers which will help them be more comfortable with themselves without being dependent on anyone. These challenges has been creatively designed from her own upbringing as a single child to her parents. These challenges or activities will definitely help you understand yourself.
You, me and many others like us, are women who are perfectly capable of finding our own happiness, of making ourselves laugh, of consoling ourselves, hugging ourselves, giving ourselves orgasms, and also fastening the hooks of any dress we’re wearing, without any help.”
MY VIEWS
This book changed my life. This helped me understand myself and my outlook towards relationships and marriage. As the author mentions in the book, we have been nurtured to think that marriage is the solution to all our problems or it is something like a destination. What our upbringing lacks is to make women realise there’s more to life than just marriages.
The author has mentioned so many books in Table for one. Whatever she has written has been put down in a manner which will help us unlearn and relearn. I have personally started taking up on the challenges she has given.
I would suggest this book to all the women out there, especially the ones who are struggling to get accustomed to their singlehood. It is a fantastic book which will give you a sense of direction and boost.
If we are true to our feelings and fight for what we truly want, we will have relationships that are so much freer and so much more honest, so much healthier and so much happier, both with the women in our lives and with our partners.
My rating for this book would be 4 out of 5 stars
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Do read this book and let me know what you think about this book :))
Happy Reading folks!
~ Meenu
