Five Men Who Broke My Heart

Publishers Weekly

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. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Freelancer Shapiro's debut memoir catches up with the perps of her top five heartbreaks and rehashes her romantic history. Approaching 40, the author is suffering the throes of a " 'no-book-no-baby' summer" in New York City. The novel she spent five years writing has been turned down (again), her workaholic husband Aaron is on another business trip, and his lack of sperm motility has thwarted her attempts to get pregnant. Enter ex-boyfriend #1: "Half linebacker, half bespectacled science nerd," Brad arrives from Boston, his already-sold manuscript in hand. Shapiro pushes aside her resentment ("What the hell did he mean-he had a book coming out. I was the writer!") and invites him over. In high-heeled "fuck-me slingbacks," she entertains thoughts of "jumping Brad on the living room floor, getting pregnant, moving to Boston." Instead, they have lunch. Shapiro steers the conversation to what happened between them years before, conducting the first of her belated exit interviews with former flames. While this conceit was a hit in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, Shapiro's execution is flimsier. Her light, breezy tone all but assures readers that she won't be betraying her husband, so her story lacks the tension of something truly being at stake. And she fails to convey a genuine sense of necessity about her quest, whose purpose is diffuse. Although Aaron's aloofness makes his spouse wonder if she "flunked all five breakups" (she felt abandoned by her exes, feels abandoned by him), and his infertility makes her question whether they're "flawed as a couple," it's not clear how dredging up the detritus of lost loves will shed light. But Shapiro's story is less enlightening than entertaining. Whileher candor can give her writing the appearance of real soul-searching, in fact she merely blazes through each encounter, capturing the flirtatious repartee and humor but glossing over the more complicated motivations and emotions. Amusing-but lacks genuine self-reflection and depth.