Readers of Shapiro's memoir may find themselves wishing her romantic history contained more than five heartbreaking men. Cruel as this may sound, Shapiro's often funny and always heartfelt recollections of past relationships are so entertaining, it's a shame she doesn't have an endless supply of material. The seasoned journalist (the New York Times Magazine
, the Washington Post
, Cosmopolitan
, Glamour
, etc.) was initially inspired to track down her former lovers when an old college flame found her six months before her 40th birthday, at a time when, although happily married, "I was staggering through a vulnerable stretch of midlife crisis: 'my no-book-no-baby-summer.' " Her and Brad's casual but emotionally freighted meeting (where Brad's features "seemed splattered across his face like a platypus") left Shapiro with a hankering for the lowdown on her other great loves. And so, in part as an escape from the disappointment of infertility, she embarked on a cross-country jaunt to reconnect with her beaux: the beach boy, the biographer, the aptly nicknamed "root canal" and her remarkably tolerant husband, Aaron. In the end, she admits "all of my old boyfriends had lost their luster. They'd been demystified, reduced to friendship. That's what I'd been doing these past six months—I had successfully declawed my past." Luckily for her audience, the result is a delightfully kaleidoscopic autobiography of an impulsive and passionate woman who comes of age with style. Agent, Elizabeth Kaplan. (Dec. 30)
Forecast:
Print ads and author publicity should help this original memoir achieve strong holiday sales. Shapiro has earned advance praise from Erica Jong, Ian Frazier, Molly Jong-Fast and Joan Rivers.
