Survival Training For Lonely Hearts By Elana Bregin

 PRAISE FOR SURVIVAL TRAINING FOR LONELY HEARTS:

Witty, wry and wickedly frank, Bregin peels away the layers of deception within our intimate relationships and ourselves. - Kobus Moolman, author of 'Light and After' 

Elana Bregin has given us a novel to curl up with, as emotionally satisfying as a box of chocolates - but with more layers. This is chick lit with soul, a genre-busting novel rich in the texture of life in South Africa, and with complex characters we all know and recognise. - Jo-Anne Richards, author of 'My Brother's Book'

Bregin's vividly drawn characters are totally South African in accent and aspiration; totally recognisable wherever love, loss and strong conviction are the stuff of our vulnerable humanity - Michael Chapman, author of 'South African Literatures'

SYNOPSIS:

Kate is a burnt-out South African editor at the busy Centaur Press publishing house; over forty and lonely, she is driven to searching for love on the Internet like so many other overworked professionals. There she encounters the full spectrum of mid-life manhood, from the perilous to the pathetic to the promising.

The challenges of finding a belated soulmate online pose a few daunting conundrums for Kate ? chief among them the realisation of how impassable the gulfs in outlook are between the candidates who cross her inbox and her own set of personal non-negotiables. She goes on some dates, accumulates some bruises and has her eyes opened to a few things about herself along the way. But it is the collision with her own baggage that proves to be the most daunting encounter of all.

The coming into her life of a young African dog is the catalyst that forces her to some painful realisations: in order to find the intimacy she longs for, she first has to deal with her own destructive patterns. She loses her heart, finds her mojo and as in all good quest journeys, discovers that the map is not the territory.

Part wry romance, part social commentary, Survival Training for Lonely Hearts tracks the complexities of modern living in South Africa, caught between the collateral damage of the old and the emerging vibrancy of the new. Through the experiences of Kate, the online-dating milieu and the kaleidoscopic interchanges of the book-publishing world become an exploration of the broader issues we all face.