The Year of Yes

Posted by kim on December 1, 2005

I never have liked to read books. And I dreaded book reports in school. I stuck to Harlequin novels where I could copy the back of the book for the main plot, and we all know that in Harlequin books, the couples always end up happily ever after. Imagine how good my book reports would have been if I would have had internet access back then! Seems I “google” (used as a verb in my vocabulary) everything nowadays. But I still dislike reading long stories, even newspaper articles if I have to flip to another page to continue the story.

Well, I received an advanced proof copy (to be released 1/6/06) of a book one of my friends recommended: The Year of Yes by Maria Dahvana Headley. So, I took the plunge and gave reading a shot again. And I couldn’t put it down!

Being single again myself, I could relate. Plus it is based in New York City, and having just been there, I recognized the atmosphere. Supposedly it is a true story with a happy ending. Her writing seriously made me laugh out loud. If I were a book critic, I would give it a thumbs up.

Publishers Weekly can summarize the story better than me….
When Idaho-born Headley, a 20-year-old NYU drama student, laments, “I felt like I’d dated and then hated every man in Manhattan,” she thinks perhaps she’s too critical. So she “decided that I would say yes to every man who asked me out on a date.” It sounds disastrous, even scary, though she chose to exclude the drunk, the drugged, the violent, and cheating husbands. The first date was the Puerto Rican handyman who came to fix the toilet with his daughter in tow, the second a 40-year-old who spoke only Polish. One took her to a strip joint, one wanted his penis bitten, one was a woman and one asked her to marry him on the first date. One of the nicest turned out to be the 70-year-old Latino who made obscene sucking noises and claimed to have 11 children. The one Headley got a crush on turned out to be “mostly gay.” And then what happened? Believe it or not—true love. Reader, she married him. It’s sheer chick fluff, but amusing, with names changed “to protect the indignant, the infantile, and, of course, the innocent.”

Luckily her book hasn’t given me the notion attempt a “year of yes”… yet. You can pre-order a copy of the book for yourself now!