Chastened: My Modern Adventure in Old-Fashioned Romance

(Paperback)

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'I'd had enough sex without love, maybe it was time to look for love without sex'- a witty look at twenty-first-century sex as Hephzibah Anderson seeks to resurrect romance during a year-long adventure in chastity Like most women, Hephzibah wants to find love. But she has just turned thirty and she's single- again. Looking back on her twenties, the years seem a blur of parties and flings. Being footloose and fancy free was supposed to be fun, but somehow it kept ending in tears. Now she wonders- where was the romance This is a story about rediscovering romance. Forget the fly-by-night cads and unreturned calls, Hephzibah decides. Bring on old-fasioned flirting and the art of courtship. So, she takes a year off sex to find love. She sips cocktails in Manhattan with a dark-eyed musician, and encounters unexpected temptation back in London. Her quest has life-changing consequences when, after all, she discovers romance is still alive and well.

Reviews

This memoir of notches not carved is surprisingly readable, displaying a melancholy tenderness and candid self-awareness rarely found in confessional writing ... Chastened feels like a genuine attempt to find a solution to a loveless life, and articulates the thoughts of many single women with a purposeful freshness -- Ariane Sherine * Observer *
Her book is tender, clever, heartbreaking and funny ... every single woman and man should read it before even thinking of going on a date again -- Katy Guest * Independent on Sunday *
Fascinating, revealing and bravely honest work...Anderson focuses on the much-maligned concepts of love, courtship and the intimacies of chastity -- Paul Blezard * The Week *
In the course of this sexless year, she flirts, texts and (platonically) romps her way through innumerable encounters...however with Chastened you get what it says on the cover: no Sex in the City -- Melanie Mcgrath * The Scotsman *
Chastened is more than fashionable dinky. One hopes that Anderson will write the novels that are evidently within her * Independent *

Author Bio

Hephzibah Anderson graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in English Literature and has worked as a journalist ever since. She was Fiction Editor at the Daily Mail until 2007, and wrote on debut fiction for the Observer for five years. She now works freelance as a critic, feature writer and broadcaster for various British and international outlets including Vogue, Bloomberg Muse, and BBC Radio Five Live.