Chick Lit, Classic

by Gail Parent

Three decades after its original bestselling publication, Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York is still completely on target as the most achingly funny book-length suicide note ever written by an agonizingly single thirty-year-old trying unsuccessfully to straddle two the one she's been programmed for from birth - marriage first, life later - and the illusory swinging singles scene of liberated New York City.You know her. Maybe you are her. Sheila's pretty cute (her mother says she's beautiful), she dates a bit here and there, she has a best friend who's taller and thinner, and she thinks her future is, well, in the future. Then it happens, she slams headlong into her thirtieth birthday...and she's still single. Sheila tries valiantly to rectify the situation, she really does, but the guys she dates turn out to be gay, or interested in her best friend, or losers looking for free rent. Disappointment turns to desperation, and after a flash of insight, Sheila calmly makes a decision. She's going to kill herself.But before she does, Sheila decides to get her affairs in order and write a suicide note to explain it all to her loved ones. But as she wraps things up, she finds she's not so worried about her weight, or spending money on taxis, or finding a husband. Maybe being dead isn't all it's cracked up to be.

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