SOURCE: “Some Consolations of the Single State,” in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4883, November 1, 1996, p. 26.

In the following review, Shulman praises Fielding's ingenuity and humor.

One of the least attractive developments in the current English press is the proliferation of columns exposing the details of the journalist's emotional and domestic life. Plainly this is the result of pressure brought to bear by editors whose market research has told them that readers, even of otherwise sensible newspapers, must be served with marital bickerings and lack of success in pick-up joints, the terminal illness of friends and all the most delicate bits of the passage of children into puberty, or else they will start to chafe after a change of paper. But because a life is a big thing to sell, and it thickens the soul to do it, some writers have looked for another way to answer requirements. An obvious...