Scribe UK bags Lutkin book on staying single

Scribe UK has scooped Aimée Lutkin’s book investigating the rise in single people and how to live happily without a partner, The Lonely Hunter.

The publisher’s m.d. Sarah Braybrooke acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Peggy Boulos Smith at Writers House, acting on behalf of Susan Golomb. It will be released in the UK on Valentine’s Day 2021, while Dial Press will publish in the US.

The New York writer, director and performer’s mix of memoir and cultural reporting will examine the rise in singledom, the way loneliness is treated as abnormal and how people can live contentedly alone. It was inspired when a Jezebel piece she wrote on being single for years attracted an avalanche of responses, prompting her resolution to go on two dates a week and research the effects of being “unpartnered”.

The publisher explained: “Documenting her own experiences of singleness, dating, falling in love and ultimately of remaining unpartnered, Lutkin’s research also examines themes such as singlehood and the 'self care' industry, queer relationships and nontraditional unions, Britain’s loneliness epidemic, the limitations of dating apps, and incels. Above all, Lutkin interrogates the under-examined assumption that women's identities must remain arranged around the romantic milestones of falling in love, marriage and childbearing, leaving single women with few ways to mark the passage of their lives.”

Braybrooke said she had a “click” of recognition when reading the proposal for the book. She said: “Lutkin is fearless in plumbing the complexity of being a single woman today, examining her own ambivalence along with a wide range of subjects that feel utterly of the moment. There are so many books out there about romantic relationships, but very few which explore what it might mean to live without them, despite the fact that an increasing number of people around the world do so.”