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A review by smoladeryn
The Lonely Hunter: How Our Search for Love Is Broken by Aimée Lutkin
reflective
slow-paced
2.5
It’s so unfortunate this book doesn’t seem to know what it should be. At times it’s trying hard to be sociological study, but ends up more being awkwardly inserted social justice that’s weirdly at odds with the memoir aspects.
Which, in the end this is all the book really achieves for me - it’s a memoir. It’s well written but sadly empty with a lot of self centred navel gazing and complaining.
The most uncomfortable part of all of this is the cognitive dissonance scattered throughout. The writer is a queer woman who seems oddly obsessed with finding heteronormative love. Her “person”, who despite being bisexual she seems far more invested in finding a man. Maybe she swings more that way which is fine but there’s some feeling of a lack of self awareness.
The conclusion which is all social justice feels at odds with a lack of insight of the writer’s privilege in finding love. The focus on physical attributes of her various dates (and get own) just one aspect of that.
The last aspect is her almost complete derision of polyamory as a choice in love. She acknowledged that a lot of what she encounters are heirarchy based and ironically unloving to anyone but the central couples, yet has very typical monogamy based judgements about this style of love. Extra odd given the entire premise of the book being that our search for love is broken.
I will say she doesn’t shy away from at least trying things but as with many of her dates her approach seems quite selfish.
In the end I found the whole thing unfortunately felt like a rant filled with nostalgia for things that have hurt the author. Randomly inserted science and social justice to temper it maybe!
Which, in the end this is all the book really achieves for me - it’s a memoir. It’s well written but sadly empty with a lot of self centred navel gazing and complaining.
The most uncomfortable part of all of this is the cognitive dissonance scattered throughout. The writer is a queer woman who seems oddly obsessed with finding heteronormative love. Her “person”, who despite being bisexual she seems far more invested in finding a man. Maybe she swings more that way which is fine but there’s some feeling of a lack of self awareness.
The conclusion which is all social justice feels at odds with a lack of insight of the writer’s privilege in finding love. The focus on physical attributes of her various dates (and get own) just one aspect of that.
The last aspect is her almost complete derision of polyamory as a choice in love. She acknowledged that a lot of what she encounters are heirarchy based and ironically unloving to anyone but the central couples, yet has very typical monogamy based judgements about this style of love. Extra odd given the entire premise of the book being that our search for love is broken.
I will say she doesn’t shy away from at least trying things but as with many of her dates her approach seems quite selfish.
In the end I found the whole thing unfortunately felt like a rant filled with nostalgia for things that have hurt the author. Randomly inserted science and social justice to temper it maybe!