Straight Talking - Softcover

Green, Jane

 
9780141011516: Straight Talking
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0141011513 ISBN 13: 9780141011516
Verlag: Penguin, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Number one bestseller Jane Green - author of Babyville and The Love Verb - explores the hectic life of a single career girl looking to find love in her hilarious first novel Straight Talking.

This could be about your best friend. Or your girlfriend. Or it might be about you.

Are you Tasha - single and searching?
Or her best friends:
Andy, hooked on passion;
Mel, stuck in a relationship with a bastard;
or Emma, endlessly waiting for her other half to propose?

Do you know an Andrew - suave, good-looking and head over heels in love . . . with himself?
Or a Simon - allergic to commitment and dangerously treacherous?
Or even an Adam - handsome, kind, humorous, but too nice to be sexy?

Follow them all in their journey to find fulfillment and love.

'Funny, honest, superb' Company

'Any woman who's suffered a relationship trauma will die for this book. Wickedly funny, will make you squeal with laughter' Cosmopolitan

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jane Green is the Number One bestselling author of nineteen novels including: Straight Talking, Jemima J, Mr Maybe, Bookends, Babyville, Spellbound, The Other Woman, Life Swap, Second Chance, The Beach House, Girl Friday, The Love Verb, The Patchwork Marriage, The Accidental Husband and Tempting Fate. Jane and her husband live in Connecticut with their blended family of six children.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1



I was never supposed to be single at thirty years old. I was supposed to be like my mother, wasn't I? Married, a couple of kids, a nice home with Colefax and Fowler wallpaper and a husband with a sports car and a mistress or two.

Well, to be honest I would mind about the mistresses, but not as much as I mind being single. What I'd really, really love is a chance to walk down that aisle dressed in a cloud of white, and let's face it, I'm up there at the top, gathering dust.

It can't be that unusual, surely, to be thirty years old and to spend most of your spare time dreaming about the most important day of your life? I don't know, perhaps it's just me, perhaps other women redirect their energies into their careers. Perhaps I'm just a desperately sad example of womanhood. Oh God, I hope not.

It's not as if I haven't had relationships, although, admittedly, none of them have come close to proposing. I've come close to thinking they were my potential husband. A bit too close. Every time. But hey, if you're going to go into it you may as well go into it thinking this time he might be Mr. Right, as opposed to Mr. Right-for-three-weeks-before-he-does-his-usual-disappearing-act.

Sometimes I think it's me. I think I must be doing something wrong, giving out subliminal messages so they can smell the desperation, read the neon lights on my forehead . . . "keep away from this woman, she is looking for commitment," but most of the time I think it's them. Bastards. All of them.

But I never quite lose hope that my perfect man, my soulmate, is out there waiting for me, and every time my heart gets broken I think that next time it's going to be different.

And I'm a sucker for big, strong, handsome men. Exactly the type my mother always told me to avoid. "Go for the ugly ones," she always used to say, "then they'll be grateful." But she landed up with my handsome father, so she's never had the pleasure of that particular experience.

And the problem with small men is they make you feel like an Amazonian giant. At least they do if you're five feet, eight and a half inches, and a size twelve, or thereabouts, the product of constant dieting in public, and constant bingeing in private.

Big men are far better. They put their arms around you, their head resting on yours and you feel like a little girl; safe from the big bad world; as if nothing could ever go wrong again.

So here I am, and for your information I am neither fat, ugly, nor socially dysfunctional. Most people think I'm twenty-six, which secretly annoys the hell out of me, because I like to think of myself as mature and sophisticated, and I'm generally thought of as strikingly attractive.

I know this because the men--when they're still in the stages of being kind to me--say this, but unfortunately I've always longed to be strikingly pretty. I've tried being pretty, painting on big eyes and looking coyly out from under my fringe, but pretty can't be attained. Pretty, you either are or you aren't.

I'm successful, in a fashion. I earn enough money to go on shopping binges at Joseph every three months or so, and I own my own flat. OK, it's not in the smartest part of London, but if you closed your eyes between the car and the front door, you might--only might, mind--just think you were in Belgravia. Apart from the lingering smell of cat pee that is.

Of course I have cats. What self-respecting single career woman of thirty who's secretly desperately longing to give it all up for the tall, rich stranger of her dreams doesn't have cats? They're my babies. Harvey and Stanley.

They might be stupid names, but I quite like the idea of cats having human names, particularly ones you don't expect. The greatest name I ever heard was Dave the cat. A cat called Dave--brilliant, isn't it? I can't stand Fluffys, or Squeaks, or Snowys. And then people wonder why their cats are arrogant. I'd be supercilious, too, if my mother had called me Fluffy.

Luckily she didn't. She called me Anastasia, Nasty to my enemies, Tasia, Tasha, to my friends, of which I have many.

Because just in case you're reading this and you happen to be happily married with other couples as friends, doing cozy couply things together, let me tell you that when you're a single girl, friends are vital.

I always thought the women's magazines were talking a load of crap when they told you to forget about men, crack open a bottle of wine, and sit around with your girlfriends cackling about sex, but it's true.

I still can't quite believe it's true because it's only recently--well, within the last three years--that I've discovered this group of female friends, but that's exactly what we do, once a week, and just in case you're thinking it's sad and lonely, it's not. It's great.

There's me, naturally; Andrea, commonly known as "Andy"; Mel; and Emma.

And I suppose, much as I hate the term ladettes, that's exactly what we are, except we all despise football. Actually Andy says she loves football, and she claims to support Liverpool, but she only says it for two reasons: She fancies Stan Collymore, and she thinks it impresses men.

They are impressed, but they don't fancy her because Andrea is everything I dread. She's more "blokeish" than most of the blokes I know. If a guy's drinking beer, Andrea will instantly challenge him to a drinking competition, and she usually wins. Attractive? I don't think so. They all think she's a great laugh but they wouldn't want to wake up next to her.

You think I'm bitter? If you'd been dumped from a great height by what feels like practically every single man in London, you'd be slightly bitter. But bear with me and you'll discover I'm not quite as bitter as I sound.

In case you're wondering how I earn my money, I'm a television producer. A bit of a joke, isn't it? I who leads such an exciting glamorous life, producing a daytime television show, I who rubs shoulders with the stars every day of her life, I who can't find a bloody man.

But I've had some fun on the show, I grant you. I remember one time an actor came on as a guest--can't tell you who he is, much as I'd like to, because he's very famous, and very famously married to an equally famous wife. The night before the show I had to go to his hotel to brief him, you know, just to check my researcher had got the right stuff, and there we were, drinking gin and tonics in the hotel bar, with him rubbing my leg under the table.

I can't deny I fancied him rotten and I followed him upstairs to make sure we "hadn't left anything out." Gave him the blow job to end all blow jobs. I'll admit it didn't do a lot for me, but then again, I've dined out on that story for nearly four years. I would tell you too, you understand, but we're not exactly close friends, and I haven't decided whether or not I can trust you.

But what I have decided is to tell you about my life, and for all this hard, career-type stuff, I'm a real softie inside. The classic scratch-the-surface-and-you'll-find-marshmallow stuff. You've got to be hard in television--I didn't make it this far just by dishing out the odd blow job--but put me in a room with a man I could love, a man who could take care of me, and I'm jelly, bloody jelly.

That's my problem, you see. They meet me and think I spell danger, glamour, excitement, and then two weeks down the line, right about the time I'm trying to move my toothbrush into their bathroom cabinet and my silk nightdress under their pillow, they realize I'm not so different after all.

And after I've cooked them gourmet meals, because I'm an excellent cook, and added a few flowers and feminine touches to their bachelor pads, they know I could make a good wife. Actually I'd make a bloody superb wife; and they're off, like shit from...

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Verlag
Penguin
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0141011513
ISBN 13 
9780141011516
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
304
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

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