Chastened

'I'd had enough sex without love, maybe it was time to look for love without sex?': a witty look at twenty-first-century sex as Hephzibah Anderson seeks to resurrect romance during a year-long adventure in chastity

For the last year Hephzibah Anderson has flirted, dated, swooned, and sighed. She has been tantalized by intense conversations, lingering looks and clinches in the back of taxis. She has watched dawn break cradled in the arms of a dangerous ex, sipped cocktails against the Manhattan skyline with a dark-eyed companion, and dined al fresco in the English countryside with a man who promises to be more than just a friend. She has talked, embraced, kissed. But she has not had sex. Turning on its head the maxim that declares romance dead, journalist Hephzibah Anderson has thrown herself headfirst into finding romance in an age obsessed with sex. Chastened is the story of her personal quest to stay chaste for a year, fusing a candid and pithy month-by-month account of her personal challenge with an exploration of what sex means in the twenty-first-century western world. In a welcome antidote to the pole-dancing hen night, Anderson elegantly unpicks our attitudes to relationships; and reconnects with the much undervalued values of courtship and intimate friendship in our lives.

Author Profile

Hephzibah Anderson graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in English Literature and has worked as a journalist ever since. She was Fiction Editor at the Daily Mail until 2007, and wrote on debut fiction for the Observer for five years. 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

Chastened is more than fashionable dinky. One hopes that Anderson will write the novels that are evidently within her,This memoir of notches not carved is surprisingly readable, displaying a melancholy tenderness and candid self-awareness rarely found in confessional writing ... Chastened feels like a genuine attempt to find a solution to a loveless life, and articulates the thoughts of many single women with a purposeful freshness,Her book is tender, clever, heartbreaking and funny ... every single woman and man should read it before even thinking of going on a date again,In the course of this sexless year, she flirts, texts and (platonically) romps her way through innumerable encounters...however with Chastened you get what it says on the cover: no Sex in the City,Much ado about nothing…but comic and honest piece written by Anderson herself,Fascinating, revealing and bravely honest work...Anderson focuses on the much-maligned concepts of love, courtship and the intimacies of chastity..it’s my ‘book with a buzz this week,Thoughtful and insightful. Anderson manages to avoid the expected clichés and monotony by offering a considered combination of autobiography, psychology, feminist history, anthropology and sociology in her writing,The elegant prose is meandering and poetic… [Anderson] imparts her wisdom with accessible and informative references,this candid account.. raises questions from a world more shocked by ‘chastity’ than ‘pole dancing’,This honest account is a real eye opener,Heart-warming memoir which will strike a chord with women everywhere from the first page. If your love life is jaded and you want to turn things around, this will inspire you,A bedroom confessional for the thinking girl, written with novelistic flair and offering that unbeatable diary-peeking thrill. Every woman will find herself here.