I don’t mind
telling you that this book took me right outside of my comfort zone.
Not in a bad
way. More in a ‘my comfort zone is a very fictional story and this is not that’
kind of way. I made a little promise to myself at the start if this year
though, that I was going to try and read more of books that are not novels –
more non-fiction, more memoirs, more poetry, more short stories – and so when I
was offered the chance to have a read of this one, I shrugged my shoulders and
thought ‘why the hell not.’
And here we
are.
Rosenbloom
is a travel columnist for the New York Times. In this book she’s visiting 4
cities in 4 seasons. On her own.
All by herself.
Alone.
As a girl who
really wishes she were brave enough to date herself and is endlessly envious of
those who can sit at a bar on their own with a gin and be perfectly content in
their own skin; who can go to the cinema and not flinch at ordering just one
ticket; who will happily sit in a coffee shop and not be hiding behind a book
or endlessly scrolling through Instagram, the idea of this really appealed to me.
I think there’s
a part of all of us that in some ways yearns for solitude and there’s a lot to
be said I think, for the kind of experience you could get of a place if you
explored it on your own, in your own time and on your own terms. It helped that
the cities Rosenbloom was visiting were cities I
was keen to know more about. I already love New York (no other city ever made
me glad) and Istanbul, Florence and Paris are all on my list.
Really,
this book had my name all over it. Apart from it actually has Stephanie
Rosenbloom’s name all over it cos she wrote it, but you know what I mean.
