A BOOK REVIEW ON “SUDDENLY SINGLE”
BY “SHEILA O’ FLANAGAN”



“ We create relations and not the relation create us”. Man is fully indulged in a society which revolves around the relationships and this book digs beneath every single secrets of the words so called “Relationships”. The author of this book “Sheila O’ Flanagan” have a critical opinions on a conventional way of sticking to the norms of the society. She insist the single phrase through out the yellow page of this book i.e. “He who doesn’t depend mustn’t repent “ .
Author is currently a bond dealer based on Dublin. And her novel “Dreaming about a stranger” in 1997 has raised her to sky.
Dominant character of this novel “ Alix Callaghan” is a head of treasury in Europa bank,Dublin. She is a well established girl with her own rules to follow and feeling comfortable lead it through. She has a very good reputation of being a solution getter in a company. Her colleagues “Dave, Gavin, Genny” also adore her such qualities, but Gavin and Dave were jealous about her. And also she was engaged in a affair with a man named “Paul” for three years.
Sheila lived with him for three years in a same apartment and joined their hands together to every obstacles involved. But suddenly she is left alone by him and this brings the twist in the story. The main reason behind destroying this strong bond was the ego problem. This word is described precisely in this novel. This word haunts the mind and soul of Paul as Alix was always confident about what she thinks and acts making her own strong decision in their life thus creating a question mark on decisive power of a dominant male character like Paul. This makes him a little uncomfortable in the run, so he insisted Alix to marry him and set a family. The main intension behind this was to make her involved in the household works and give less preference to her career. But Alix denies to make the relationship so early and destroy her ever going career and this results to her loneliness.
As the time proceeds she is pressurized by her parents and society to have a family and be a household wife. But she was determined with what she was doing. She felt that if status takes over so long and strong love then there is nothing to stick on. The result of such misunderstanding was also seen on her job. She was all alone and her lack of confidence made her difficult to maintain the position in the company. This gave a chance for her colleagues to take over her position. She was also tortured by the society of being lonely and not maintaining relationship with Paul and not giving a bit of comprise.
Thus this incident makes us clear that how difficult is the life of a woman in any society regardless of the economic condition of people. Instead its too difficult to maintain the created bonds for a woman in the state of independence of economy and status.
This novel runs to and from a struggle of a girl with independent living and solid status. There’s always a thrill in the novel regarding the circumstances over coming at every paragraph. Do “ Alix” bow to society and remake the broken relationship? Or will she be determined to make her own way to eternal satisfaction. All you can know only when you hear the whispering pages of this book.
Thus presenting such a master piece to the world author “Sheila” has tried to show how a girl, with a very high reputation and ego, is trying to survive in the world, which is trying to dominate her on her every step, on her own.


Rating:
*****