Eh. What can I say? I found this book in the dollar bin at Books-a-million, and frankly, didn't read the cover well enough to realize it was a memoir. To be honest, at times it felt like fiction. The author is obviously funny and that comes across in some really amusing descriptions and anecdotes (I especially liked the descriptions of and her interactions with her parents). But I must admit that at some point I started to feel like maybe I should just abandon this book. It is depressing, sad even. Though ironically, since I am a 36 year old married woman with 3 kids, it made me want to be single in Manhattan. Maybe I just felt like I could be a better single person than her? Overall I just wanted to finish the book. I found her too neurotic for me, and that's saying a lot! It also might have been an easier read if I was Jewish and had a greater understanding of that culture. I don't know how I feel about this book overall, but I can say that I'm happy it's done. ( )

The author spends 15 years searching for the right man, only to discover she might not need him. Funny, although some incidents to me came across as not possibly true. ( )

I don't know where the "revolution" part comes into play in Cohen's memoir. I enjoyed her stories of her parents (especially her mom), but I wanted to know more about what she was going to do with her life after the loss of her mother. Instead this book was more about her dating woes and wanting to find somebody than what I thought it would be.

A funny/sad memoir of family and dating. ( )

The Late Bloomer’s Revolution by Amy Cohen is a memoir about a woman trying to find herself and what she had envisioned of her life becoming. She figured she would meet the love of her life, get married, have kids and live happily ever after. Come to find out, things would be completely different for her. All with in a short time period she broke up with the man she thought she was going to marry, lost her job, and had her mother die. After everything she had lived for just crumbled away before her eyes, she just couldn’t get her life back on the track she wanted, but decided to take a new route. Her father became a key figure in her life, and she got closer to him than ever before. She took on new challenges in her life that she never thought she would accomplish, and lived her life the way it happened, not how she had created in her mind.

This book closely relates to our theme of utopias and dystopias because main character, Amy Cohen, had created a utopia in her mind. She dreamed that the way her life was supposed to be was finding her true love in her early twenties, keeping the job she had, having some kids shortly after, and living the fairy tale. She quickly learns that this isn’t always going to be the case, and has a hard time understanding that. She starts to think something is wrong with her, that she’s not good enough, pretty enough, funny enough, etc. to find a husband. In reality, nothing was wrong with her, she just wasn’t meant to live that life. Eventually, she learns to accept that and be happy with how her life turned out.

I think this novel gives a lot of insight to the fact that there are so many priorities in our society that don’t necessarily have to be. It seems the majority of people see the goal of life, if you will, to be finding someone to spend it with. I think for some people this fits but not for all, and just because it may not fit you doesn’t mean the way your life turns out is wrong. Everyone is different, and creating a utopia based off what society envisions as ideal doesn’t make it ideal for you. This is an excellent book and I would recommend it to those who think they can handle it. I will admit it tended to get depressing at times. I feel it was this way because there is something about that story that wraps you up in it, and I got so involved that I felt like everything that was happening to her was happening to me. Although the realization in the end wasn’t as powerful as I was expecting, it was still very meaningful. ( )