I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris

“A delight, the literary equivalent of a long catch-up with a brilliant friend.” —New York Times

“One of the most talked-about books of the year.” —Gayle King

One of TIME's 100 Must-Reads of 2024 One of NPR's Book of the Day One of W Magazine's Best, Most Talked-About Books of 2024 One of Goodreads' Readers' Most Anticipated Summer Books One of Eater's 10 Food-Filled Beach Reads for Your Summer Vacation One of BookRiot's Book Critics' Most Anticipated Summer Reads One of LitHub's The Ultimate Summer 2024 Reading List
When you’re a woman of a certain age , you are only promised that everything will get worse. But what if everything you’ve been told is a lie?

Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists and a thirst for long-overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets.

After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged forty-six, unmarried with no children, spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it. Leaving felt less like a risk than a necessity.

What follows is a decadent, joyful, unexpected journey into one woman’s pursuit of radical enjoyment.

The weeks in Paris are filled with friendship and food and sex. There is dancing on the Seine; a plethora of gooey cheese; midnight bike rides through empty Paris; handsome men; afternoons wandering through the empty Louvre; nighttime swimming in the ocean off a French island. And yes, plenty of nudity.

In the spirit of Nora Ephron and Deborah Levy (think Colette . . . if she’d had access to dating apps), I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself is an intimate, insightful, powerful, and endlessly pleasurable memoir of an intensely lived experience whose meaning and insight expand far beyond the personal narrative. MacNicol is determined to document the beauty, excess, and triumph of a life that does not require permission.

The pursuit of enjoyment is a political act, both a right and a responsibility. Enjoying yourself—as you are—is not something the world tells you is possible, but it is.

Here’s the proof.