Solitaire: The Intimate Lives of Single Women

For single women, that understanding may be a hard truth or a liberating revelation; for every woman you will meet in this book, it is the beginning of a story.

Forget Bridget Jones and Sex and the City – the lives of real single women are far more complex, more risky, more astonishing, and potentially more fulfilling than any fictional fantasy. Marian Botsford Fraser invited single women to reveal their experiences, their obsessions, and their secrets. The result is a work that blends memoir with cultural history and chronicles a social revolution in an intimate voice.

There are more than 4 million single women in Canada, and most Canadian women will be single for most of their lives. Botsford Fraser interviewed scores of women in every state of singlehood, from all parts of the country and every social stratum. She uncovered wildly divergent paths but also deep connections. The pitied figure of the spinster in Western culture, Canada’s particular brand of maternal feminism, six decades of ideal womanhood as dictated by Chatelaine all have conspired to isolate the unattached woman and all are being swept away. Herself single after a 20-year marriage, Botsford Fraser found answers to familiar dilemmas about sex and celibacy, money and financial insecurity, illness and old age, and the quest for a meaningful life of one’s own.

She discovered validation, inspiration, and transformation in the true stories of women who are redefining the meaning of family, community, and the new "single woman."