Product Description

Carmen Legg, a tall sporty red-head, is fed up with men and their one-track minds. She is thirty something, drives her own BMW, lives in her own apartment and likes to run her own life the way she wants it. The book opens with a day when three men prompt her to take radical action. The first is a businessman who, at a seminar, can't take his eyes off her legs. The second is a business associate she has to tease at dinner to get him to make the deal she wants. And the third is the lover in her bed, who, on her return from an exhausting day, can't take no for an answer. What she needs, Carmen decides, is a man with higher things on his mind. So with her friend, an eighty-year-old neighbour with a dramatic past, she places a rather unusual advertisement...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #969397 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

SUNDAY TIMES
'A phenomenon'

TELEGRAPH
'This book is dynamite'

Synopsis
Carmen Legg, a tall sporty red-head, is fed up with men and their one-track minds. She is thirty something, drives her own BMW, lives in her own apartment and likes to run her own life the way she wants it. The book opens with a day when three men prompt her to take radical action. The first is a businessman who, at a seminar, can't take his eyes off her legs. The second is a business associate she has to tease at dinner to get him to make the deal she wants. And the third is the lover in her bed, who, on her return from an exhausting day, can't take no for an answer. What she needs, Carmen decides, is a man with higher things on his mind. So with her friend, an eighty-year-old neighbour with a dramatic past, she places a rather unusual advertisement...

Customer Reviews

Lighthearted and enjoyable, an interesting concept
Despite the fact that this book is not highly intellectual, and some of the jokes probably made more sense in the German version, however it is a lighthearted and enjoyable story dealing with the female meets male relationsship saga from a refreshingly different angle.

This book will particularly appeal to independent females in their late twenties or thirties.

Readable Confusion
Found myself wondering what this book wanted to be. It swung from being a 30-something, Jones-diary quirky little novel, to looking, in a quite competant way, at the pre-viagra problem of impotence to examining the problems of male female sexuality. Sometimes it got lost in Mill and Boone classic romantism, dragging us off into a pre-war West African family drama. Of course the central theme is silly and improbable, and it was somewhat irrational that a woman sworn to forgo sex, promptly sets about having lots with practically each suiter, but that said there were some comical situations and interesting characters (sadly under developed I have to say). However was attempted rape supposed to be funny? And what was the hostage taking incident doing in there? Was it some kind of metaphore? I liked the moral of a heroine, who had it all, wanted more and finally gets caught up in her own trap as well as the different female characters and their approach to love and sex but this book lets itself down by its, implausable situations, some crude dialogue (possibly difficulties in translation) and horribly trite ending.

Great book, well worth reading!
Originally it was the title that drew my attention to this book - it made me wonder "Why? " Once I realised that it was a translation I was worried that the language would be stilted, as sometimes is the case in translations. However, it was a very easy read and very witty - I felt almost compelled to read it, and kept thinking about it when I was forced to do other things (like go into a lecture, for example!)Although I have to say that I thought Carmen Legg was one of those women that seemed to have it all - and yet was still not satisfied. Despite this, she was an immensely likeable character and a worthy heroine.