SOURCE: Bundesen, Lynne. Review of Spirit of Survival, by Gail Sheehy. Los Angeles Times Book Review (6 July 1986): 5.

In the following excerpt, Bundesen asserts that Sheehy's subject matter in Spirit of Survival is important, but that the focus of the book is too diffuse, the discussion is weakened by overgeneralizations, and the narrative is overly concerned with Sheehy herself.

Gail Sheehy is probably best known in this country as the author of Passages. Her work is in the genre usually referred to as “pop sociology.” Sheehy describes herself fearing loneliness and middle age, and when “the man in her life” urges her to join him in Southeast Asia just as she has completed a cross-country book tour and is about to suffer what she calls “writer's paralysis,” she goes along with the idea.

Over breakfast after an amorous first night in the Oriental Hotel of Bangkok, she reads on...