Book Summary
When
Mar Meyer's husband divorces her for another woman, she reacts by abandoning
everything in her past: her home, her friends, even her name. Though it's not
easy to start over, Mar is young-looking, fit, and ready for new adventures -
as long as she can keep things casual.
With
each passing month, Mar goes from one acquaintance to the next. Among them: a
fellow gym member down on her luck, a flirty hip-hop instructor, a bossy but
comical consultant, a kindly older gentleman . . . and Charlie, a handsome
best-selling novelist who wants more from Mar than she's able to give. She
learns something new from each encounter. But can she change enough to open
herself up to happiness and true connection?
Surrounded
by an ensemble of quirky, endearing characters, Mar follows a tortuous and
unpredictable path as she navigates the first year of her reinvented life. My
Year of Casual Acquaintances is packed with laugh-out-loud moments mingled
with scenes of loneliness and self-doubt that will put a lump in your throat.
Publisher:
Black Rose Writing (September 26, 2024)
ISBN-10:
168513484X
ISBN-13:
978-1685134846
ASIN:
B0D43GW5XZ
Print
Length: 322 pages
Purchase
a copy of My Year of Casual Acquaintances on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.org. Add to your GoodReads reading list.
About the Author
Ruth
F. Stevens likes to create stories that will make readers laugh and cry. A
former public relations executive in New York and Los Angeles, she is a
produced playwright and author of a previous novel, Stage Seven, which
was a featured selection of national online book club and Alzheimer’s awareness
organizations. Ruth is a proud member of the Women’s Fiction Writers
Association and the Dramatists Guild of America and serves as a volunteer and
acquisitions editor for AlzAuthors.
Ruth
lives in Torrance, California with her husband. In her spare time, she enjoys
travel, hiking, hip-hop and fitness classes, yoga, Broadway musicals, wine
tasting, leading a book club, and visiting her grandsons in NYC. Visit Ruth at https://ruthfstevens.com and consider signing up for her
monthly newsletter to receive publishing updates, book reviews, and special
offers.
Website: https://ruthfstevens.com/
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/ruthfstevensauthor/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/rfsauthor
Bookbub:
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/ruth-f-stevens
(In
an excerpt from the opening chapter of My Year of Casual Acquaintances, we
get a glimpse into narrator Mar Meyer’s resolve to reinvent herself after
divorce. She’s gone to happy hour at a local bar with a fellow gym member, the
first in a succession of “casual acquaintances” Mar meets in the course of this
episodic novel. 388 words)
We
go inside and grab a high table near the bar. A glass of California chard for
me, a dirty martini for Whitney. We clink our icy glasses in a merry toast as I
stifle the impulse to complain that my chardonnay has arrived overchilled. I
don’t want to spoil this lovely moment of camaraderie with my newfound
acquaintance. I check my cellphone before
tucking it inside my purse, but not before Whitney glimpses the screenshot of a
towheaded toddler.
“Who’s that little cutie?” she asks.
“My grandson Benny.”
Her jaw drops. “Get out. How can you have a grandson?
We’re, like, the same age, right?”
“Not unless you’re fifty,” I say, a hint of braggadocio in my voice. On
the first week of January, I celebrated my fiftieth birthday quietly and alone
by preference. People always think I’m at least ten years younger than my age.
It’s in the genes. “Our family is like Dick Clark’s. We all look insanely
youthful for decades, then we drop dead.”
She gives me a blank stare. “Who’s Dick Clark?”
Seriously?
I know this woman is many years younger than me, but isn’t Clark still revered
as an icon of American pop culture? I give her the benefit of the doubt and
briefly explain American Bandstand . . .
“Wow, you look amazing,” she says. “So . . . where did you find
the fountain of youth? I’m thirty-five, and I’d like to know how I can look as
good as you in fifteen years.”
Ah. She is trolling for beauty secrets. I wish I could offer some
pearls of wisdom on personal maintenance, like “get a lot of sleep and drink
plenty of water.” But the truth is, I’m not much of a sleeper and I drink more
wine than water. I assure her it’s a mix of favorable genetics and dumb luck.
“So . . . are you married?” Whitney asks.
“Divorced. But it’s all good. No hard feelings between Henry and
me.”
“Oh, cool. I’m not married either, never have been. Maybe someday,
but I don’t know . . . I like having fun, fun, fun, not being tied down to
anything, you know?”
Oh, I know. At least, I’m trying to know. Fun, fun, fun, with no
commitments—that’s what I want my life to be now.
(In My Year of Casual Acquaintances, narrator
Mar is trying to reinvent herself after the breakup of her long marriage. She
joins a new gym where she’s determined to meet people and enjoy fun,
commitment-free relationships. She assigns nicknames to fellow gym members
rather than learn their names. This excerpt describes an encounter in a yoga
class with an attractive man she has dubbed “Sexy Eyes.” 609 words)
Marlene
instructs the class to start in a cross-legged seated pose and tells us to
place our hands in a position that sounds something like Angelina Jolie. Then
she repeats the phrase and I now understand it to be anjali mudra, which
describes the simple gesture of pressing your palms together in front of the
heart. What follows is a succession of poses that Marlene calls out in
rapid-fire Sanskrit. We engage our mula bandha, drop down in Chaturanga, perform a swooping vinyasa,
invert ourselves into a V-shaped Adho Mukha Svanasana, find our drishti
as we balance one-legged in Vrksasana
to resemble a tree, squat down into an imaginary chair in Utkatasana, salute
the sun with Surya
Namaskar, and so
much more.
My comprehension of Sanskrit is
about on par with my fluency in Mandarin, but I stumble along, trying to keep
up. I find it helpful to watch Sexy Eyes and follow his lead. His long body is
agile and lithe, flowing from one pose to another with effortless skill. He has
a light winter suntan that suggests an affinity for outdoor activities. His
hair is dark on top but graying around the edges, straight and thick, in a
boyish cut that tumbles across his face whenever he lowers his head or turns
sideways in the twisty poses. His biceps and triceps, thigh muscles, and calves
all tauten as he moves from pose to pose. His limbs are well-sculpted, but his
is not the bulging physique of a bodybuilder – which is fine by me, since I
regard the muscleman look as a major turnoff.
The truth is, I’m not watching Sexy
Eyes to guide me through the poses as much as I’m ogling him. And why not? I
haven’t been with a man in a long time, and without question, this man is
highly ogleable. I reflect with catty pleasure that there’s no way Alice can
derive this kind of pleasure from observing Henry, whose pale limbs and long
bloated torso have gone soft and fleshy from years of inactivity – though in
the bedroom, I guess, he hasn’t exactly been inactive. Stop thinking about
Henry, I command myself. I steal another glance at Sexy Eyes for
distraction.
Near the end of class, as we execute
a recumbent spinal twist, Marlene sits in a serene lotus pose, organizing small
towels into a neat pile. I’m all in favor of multi-tasking, but is it
appropriate for her to be folding her laundry? It isn’t until we assume our
final corpse pose, or savasana, and she tiptoes around the room to
distribute a warm towel to each of us, that I understand the lavender-scented
cloths are to enhance our final relaxation with aromatherapy.
I nearly burst out laughing at my
own cluelessness, but Sexy Eyes turns his head toward me as he adjusts his
pose, and our brief eye contact stifles my impulse to laugh. As I take in the
soothing scent of the lavender, my eyelids grow heavy. The next thing I know,
Marlene is summoning the group back to consciousness with a gentle voice to
lead us through the final om. I’m so drowsy it takes a massive effort to
pry open my eyes.
On our way out of the studio, Sexy
Eyes asks me, “Did you enjoy the class?”
I smile up at him. “I did. But all
those yoga terms go way over my head. I need a cheat sheet with translations
and drawings.”
“You might try Marlene’s
Introduction to Yoga class. Only English is spoken there.” He must see my smile
fade because he adds, “Kidding. Keep coming back and you’ll catch on in no
time.”
Is he being polite, or is that an
invitation? I’ve no idea, but I float downstairs to the lobby, my body humming
with an unexpected frisson of excitement. I can hardly wait to get back to
hatha yoga to work on all those unpronounceable poses.
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