What Men Don't Talk About

By: Maggie Hamilton

Narrated by: Dino Marnika, Marie-Louise Walker

Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Surprising, illuminating, and at times shocking, What Men Don't Talk About reveals how real men and boys view their world. What do men and boys long for, agonize over, aspire to? Why are men often silent in dark and difficult situations? Why do so many find it hard to express how much they care? What do they look for in women? What do they want from committed relationships, from friendships? How do they feel about kids? What motivates them? What do they worry about? How do they see their bodies? What is life like for them as they age? Why do so many resort to suicide? Every day, we read articles about men: men at home, men at work, and men in bed, but still the confusion and frustration between the sexes remain. Can we put the differences between men and women down to the influence of Venus and Mars, or are there more intricate dynamics at play?

©2006 Maggie Hamilton (P)2006 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Frustrating

I found myself frequently frustrated by this book. At times it should be more accurately entitled "What some women think men don't talk about". There is a lot of commentary and relatively little of the actual reported comments of real men talking about the things that they are not generally open about. Maybe the fact that the thing is narrated in a female voice makes this even more obvious.

A large part of the first section ought to be subtitled "Boys eh! What a problem?". Much of this material is obvious and at times appears to be heavily biased towards an Australian culture. Possibly appropriate for the ambitions of the title but not apparent from the publishers guff.

If you are one of the men of the world who for whatever reason do not have children expect to feel short changed as well. I am and I did. There is a great deal of coverage of the alledged thoughts of fathers about children but no references at all to the rest of us.

At the very end of the work some context is given to its importance by referring to the disparity in suicide rates between the sexes. This material might have made more sense at the beginning as a means of establishing that the problem that the work purports to address needs addressing. Without them a lot of the material comes across as a woman saying "Wouldn't the world, and the men in it, be happier if they were more like women". There is almost no attempt to identify that some of the attitudes that men hold to life are important for the creation of a civilised society and that maybe sometimes both men and women just have to suck it up and get on with it for a greater good.

Basically an interesting idea executed in a frustrating and unsatisfying way.