Publisher: Harper Collins
Year: 1992
ISBN: 9789382618188
Rating:
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You can’t live with them and, believe it or not, you can’t live without them. Interacting with the opposite sex has always been a big deal, and impressing them the ultimate wish for many of us. But one often fails at the ‘how’ part. We often blame it on fate or destiny and move on thinking that there will be someone better in the future. While this optimistic attitude is to be appreciated, is it really that failed relationships are destined to be so? Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus attempts to reduce the differences between both sexes by explaining why these differences arose.
The book begins with a simple story where Martians (or the men) are happily living on Mars, and the Venusians (or the women) on Venus. Problems begin to arise when both of them start meeting each other and fail to realise the basic differences that exist between them as a result of belonging to different planets. Dr. Gray has explained things in a very practical manner; the book is peppered with examples of different couples and their conflicting habits and reactions. What surprised me was the fact that the author, who is a man, could understand a woman’s mind so well. I liked the chapters ‘Men are like rubber bands’ and ‘Women are like waves’ because apart from relationship advice, these chapters delve into our general characteristics as humans, so look out for a treat for the singles here! The chapter which I did not like was ‘How to communicate different feelings’ where the author teaches us to write a love letter. I personally did not like the idea of stereotyping love letters, but it may work as a relief for people who don’t know to express their emotions in writing.
This novel could have easily become a sexist one, but the author managed to not take sides, and explain the positives and negatives of both genders. The idea was not to praise the positives and remove the negatives, but to accept the negatives and highlight the positives of a person.
While I am all praise for the book’s unique ways, I was irked by the repetition of certain ideas/phrases. The first hundred pages of the book can be summarised in two lines! The author must have been trying to infuse his ideas into the brains of his readers. Apart from that the book is all good, and it is a must read for those in relationships. Singles should go for it too, because who knows? The person you just rejected may be the one you fall for after reading this book!
Get more relationship advice at the author’s site here!
Pratibha Jain
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