Wild Oats Project - Softcover

Robin Rinaldi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374982325 ISBN 13: 9780374982324

Publisher: Macmillan USA, 2015

Synopsis

What if for just one year you let desire call the shots?

The project was simple: Robin Rinaldi, a successful magazine journalist, would move into a San Francisco apartment, join a dating site, and get laid. Never mind that she already owned a beautiful flat a few blocks away, that she was forty-four, or that she was married to a man she'd been in love with for eighteen years. What followed--a year of abandon, heartbreak, and unexpected revelation--is the topic of this riveting memoir, The Wild Oats Project.

Monogamous and sexually cautious her entire adult life, Rinaldi never planned on an open marriage--her priority as she approached midlife was to start a family. But when her husband insisted on a vasectomy, something snapped. If I'm not going to have children, she told herself, then I'm going to have lovers. During the week, she would live alone, seduce men (and women), attend erotic workshops, and have wall-banging sex. On the weekends, she would go home and be a wife. Her marriage provided safety and love, but she also needed passion, and she was willing to go outside her marriage to find it.At a time when the bestseller lists are topped by books about eroticism and the shifting roles of women, this brave, brutally honest memoir explores how our sexuality defines us, how it relates to maternal longing, and how we must walk the line between loving others and staying true to ourselves. Like the most searing memoirs, The Wild Oats Project challenges our sensibilities, yielding truths that we all can recognize but that few would dare write down.

About this title

About the Author

Robin Rinaldi has worked for newspapers and magazines for fifteen years. She has been an executive editor at 7x7, a San Francisco lifestyle magazine, and written an award-winning food column for Philadelphia Weekly. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. She lives in Los Angeles.

Review

"Did I read the hell out of this book? You bet I did. . . . Rinaldi is skilled at writing about sex—she is shameless and honest. . . . She is an operatic, reckless narrator, which makes, of course, for great reading." —The Globe and Mail

"The Wild Oats Project is bravely detailed. . . . it is likely her reasoning behind her project will hit a nerve with many of us, although we might not like to admit it."
—The Independent (UK)

"The Wild Oats Project is a roller-coaster . . . a fascinating ride. . . . [with] so many twists and turns. . . . [This] book is a good read."
—Toronto Star

"Get ready for The Wild Oats Project phenomenon. . . . A sexual-awakening romp wrapped in a female-empowerment narrative, a sort of Fifty Shades of Eat, Pray, Love. . . .  [this is] a book I see launching book-club conversations and plenty of pillow talk—not just about sex and marriage, but about the price and possibility of self-reinvention."
—Washington Post

"[The Wild Oats Project is] brutally honest and real. . . . refreshing."
―The Daily Beast

Edition details

• Publisher: Macmillan USA
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374982325
• ISBN 13: 9780374982324
• Binding: Paperback