Hearing Dowd purr through her own book provides an entirely new, unexpected dimension to her writing. As with her op-ed columns for the New York Times
, her book on the travails of the modern woman clothes alarming conclusions in fizzy, irony-drenched writing. For her reading of her book on the return of femininity as a man-catching technique, Dowd turns on her own feminine wiles, often beginning new paragraphs by breathing seductively into the microphone before settling back and adopting a more ordinary-sounding tone. To Dowd, the act of reading is a form of seduction, a notion reflected in the audiobook's packaging, whose cover features a painting of a glam redhead reading on the subway. Dowd's sensual reading is a clever gambit, luring listeners in before clobbering them with the sad truth of the backlash to feminism. If her Times
gig ever falls through, she can always fall back on a second career as an audiobook reader. Simultaneous release with the Putnam hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 26). (Nov.)
