Chastened, Hephzibah Anderson
Chastened, Hephzibah Anderson
2 Rating(s)
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Chastened
The Unexpected Story of My Year Without Sex

Author: Hephzibah Anderson

Narrator: Justine Eyre

Unabridged: 8 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/30/2010

Synopsis

On the eve of her thirtieth birthday, Hephzibah Anderson glimpsed her college boyfriend going into a jewelry store with a smiling blonde—and in that moment realized it had been years since a man told her he loved her. This discovery led her to question a decade of emotionally frustrating relationships with commitment-phobes. As she examined her past, she recognized that most of these relationships went off course at the precise moment sex was involved. Anderson decided it was time to spend a full year without sex to rediscover its meaning and purpose in her life. In this confessional account, Anderson shares the results of that year, narrating each month as she flirts, dates, and swoons but doesn't have sex. The results—her feelings about femininity, her body, and romance—are illuminating.

Told with Elizabeth Gilbertesque candor, Chastened reveals much about our contradictory cultural attitudes toward sex and the ways intercourse has been used as a shortcut to deeper intimacies. An antidote to the growing genre of another-notch-in-the-bedpost memoirs, Chastened is a refreshing look at what's to be gained by going without.

About Hephzibah Anderson

Hephzibah Anderson graduated from Cambridge University with an English degree and has worked as a journalist ever since. She was the fiction editor at the Daily Mail and covered fiction for the Observer. She now works freelance as a critic, feature writer, and broadcaster for various British and international outlets, including Vogue, Bloomberg Muse, and BBC Radio Five Live.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Danna on July 29, 2011

Chastened is exactly what the title states: Hephzibah's unexpected story of her year without sex. I loved it. The inside of the book jacket made me nervous that this was going to be a story that tried to persuade young women to change their attitudes and take on promises of chaste behavior. However,......more

Goodreads review by Julia on September 03, 2014

I appreciated the candid, introspective, and often philosophical look at sex--what it has been and what it is now in society, and what it could be. Peppered with quotes from preeminent thinkers, philosophers, and "sex-experts", this was a far more compelling read than I thought it would be. And whil......more

Goodreads review by Ocean on January 24, 2011

i literally grabbed this off the shelves of the library near my job in a 30-second-oh-god-i-have-to-get-something-to-read-on-the-bus-ride-home-or-i-will-die-of-boredom frenzy. i really wasn't expecting a whole lot, but i found it to be interesting, well-read and full of interesting quotes. yes, as a......more

Goodreads review by Jana on July 30, 2010

Reading a book about someone else's self-imposed chastity is less interesting than I'd hoped it would be. It wasn't very long before it became laborious, and I struggled to finish. I found the narrative somewhat confusing in parts, as though I were reading the description of someone's dream. Charact......more

Goodreads review by katie on June 23, 2012

I wouldn't say there was anything unexpected about this book, despite its title. She is a beautiful writer, so there's lots of great vocab and some of it is very eloquently put, but then the other side of the argument is that maybe if she were a better writer it would have been more compelling? Saw......more

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