Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York

1972, 1977 Bantam edition
Gail Parent
Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York
Original price $1.95, purchase price unknown
Very worn paperback
B-

A comedic novel as a suicide note?  Well, it's the 1970s.  Sheila explains how from infancy onward she was led to believe that she should get married, but the 1960s came along and spoiled everything.  One gripe is that there are too many gay men, although the main gay man she's interested in is incredibly lazy and self-centered, so he wouldn't be much of a catch if he were straight.  She's also pursued by a lesbian, who ironically treats her better than any of the men do. 

As the title says, Sheila lives in New York City, where apparently few of the men want to get married.  She could move somewhere more traditional, but she thinks this would upset her very Jewish mother.  (Sheila is basically a stranger to her father and younger sister.)  Or she could find a new goal, since her pursuit of a husband is ruining her life.  She dates a thoroughly unappealing man named Norman for 7 years (!) just because he's the closest to a potential husband.  It's implied that she should marry a Jewish man, but she'll settle for a handsome goy.

Meanwhile she has apartments, jobs, and friends that she doesn't like.  (Linda is tolerated because she's too picky to get married.)  Sheila complains about everything, including the many men she sleeps with in the hopes that one of them will propose.

So what's to like?  Well, the book is sometimes funny, especially her attempts to plan her own funeral.  (Funnier if you've read The Loved One and The American Way of Death.)  It's also a portrait of a generation of women who came slightly before the Baby Boom (Sheila is born in '41 or '42) and got caught between the messages of their childhood and the reality of their adulthood.  As an overweight, self-deprecating Jew, she's a bit like TV's Rhoda Morgenstern, and I can only hope that as the '70s progressed she, like Rhoda, developed more confidence and happiness.  The book sort of ends on a happier note, as she decides, "I don't want to die.  I want to date!"