My Life in Agony

From the Cosmopolitan Agony Aunt columnistBorn in New Jersey, Irma Kurtz has been Cosmopolitan's agony aunt for the past forty years. After taking a degree in English Literature, Irma travelled around Europe before finally settling in London. There she joined the brand-new Cosmopolitan magazine and launched its iconic agony-aunt column, which she then also wrote for the American edition. Irma has written two novels, three travel books and three selfhelp books, including the critically acclaimed About Time: Growing Old Disgracefully.As Cosmopolitan's professional agony aunt for the last forty years, Irma Kurtz has had to deal with the most intimate problems of successive generations of readers, while having to keep up with the changing mores and attitudes in British and American society. In these memoirs, she looks back on the seismic transformations that have taken place over the last four decades, as well as her own hectic and often difficult life as a single mum from America living in London. Warm, funny and perceptive, brimming with wisdom and insight, My Life in Agony is a meditation on the subjects that tend to concern and confuse us the most - from mother-daughter relationships through to eating disorders, office politics and those perennial areas of interest: love and sex.The unshockable queen of advice.So wise that she is practically Confucius.Kurtz is exactly the sort of Wise Woman that all of us emotional wrecks would love to have as a best friend.A highly readable stew of opinions and happenings that one can read simply for pleasure and finally realise one has actually learned a lot.Lots of people may benefit from reading the advice contained within this book.