Must Love Dogs
Claire Cook, 2002
Penguin Group USA
304 pp.
Summary
"I've lived in Marshbury all of my life, and never even knew it had a trailer park. My father was way ahead of me, of course. He'd not only located the trailer park, he'd found a woman there to date."
Forty-year-old preschool teacher Sarah Hurlihy thought she'd set herself up for a great life. She'd married the man she loved. They bought a house, decorated it, and then sat, looking at each other, trying to remember why they'd gotten married in the first place. But Sarah didn't have to wonder for long; her husband took up with a younger woman, sounding the death knell for their marriage, and propelling Sarah back into singlehood—at the same time as her newly widowed father.
Thrown unwillingly into the suburban dating pool alongside her dad, Sarah is ambivalent about the whole process, despite her ticking clock and thoughts that she might enjoy a child of her own. But Sarah's large, loving Irish clan comes to her rescue—her married sister placing a personal ad in her name and regularly monitoring Sarah's dating progress; and her brother, Michael, helps her feel lovable when he seeks out her comfort and advice while riding out his own rocky marriage.
In Must Love Dogs, Claire Cook ably captures the pitfalls of the midlife singles' scene, with a generous dose of humor and a heaping portion of characters who know better than to take themselves too seriously. (From the publisher.)
The 2005 film adaptation stars Diane Lane and John Cusack.
Author Bio
• Birth—February 14, 1955
• Where—Alexandria, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., Syracuse University
• Currently—Scituate, Massachusetts
Raised on Nancy Drew mysteries, Claire Cook has wanted to write ever since she was a little girl. She majored in theater and creative writing at Syracuse University and immersed herself in a number of artistic endeavors (copywriter, radio continuity director, garden designer, and dance and aerobics choreographer), yet somehow her dreams got pushed to the side for more real-life matters—like marriage, motherhood, and a teaching career. Decades passed, then one day she found herself parked in her minivan at 5 AM, waiting for her daughter to finish swim practice. She was struck with a now-or-never impulse and began writing on the spot. By the end of the season, she had a first draft. Her first novel, Ready to Fall, was published in 2000, when Cook was 45.
Since then, this "late starter" has more than made up for lost time. She struck gold with her second book, Must Love Dogs. Published in 2002, this story of a middle-aged divorcee whose singles ad produces hilariously unexpected results was declared "funny and pitch-perfect" by the Chicago Tribune and "a hoot" by the Boston Globe. (The novel got a second life in 2005 with the release of the feature film starring Diane Lane and John Cusack.) Cook's subsequent novels, with their wry, witty take on the lives of middle-aged women, have become bestsellers and book club favorites.
Upbeat, gregarious, and grateful for her success, Cook is an inspiration for aspiring writers and women in midlife transition. She tours indefatigably for her novels and genuinely enjoys speaking with fans. She also conducts frequent writing workshops, where she dispenses advice and encouragement in equal measure. "I'm extraordinarily lucky to spend my time doing what I love," she has said on countless occasions. " The workshops are a way to say thank you and open doors that I stumbled through to make it easier for writers coming up behind me.''
Extras
From a 2004 Barnes & Noble interview:
• I first knew I was a writer when I was three. My mother entered me in a contest to name the Fizzies whale, and I won in my age group. It's quite possible that mine was the only entry in my age group since "Cutie Fizz" was enough to win my family a six-month supply of Fizzies tablets (root beer was the best flavor) and half a dozen turquoise plastic mugs with removable handles. At six I had my first story on the "Little People's Page" in the Sunday paper (about Hot Dog, the family Dachshund) and at sixteen, I had my first front page feature in the local weekly.
• In the acknowledgments of Multiple Choice I say that even though it's probably undignified to admit it, I'm having a blast as a novelist. To clarify that, having a blast as a novelist does not necessarily mean having a blast with the actual writing. The people part—meeting readers and booksellers and librarians and the media—is very social and I'm having lots of fun with that. The writing part is great, too, once you get past the procrastination, the self-doubt, and the feelings of utter despair. It's all of the stuff surrounding the writing that's hard; once you find your zone, your place of flow, or whatever it is we're currently calling it, and lose yourself in the writing, it really is quite wonderful. I've heard writers say it's better than sex, though I'm not sure I'd go that far.
• I love books that don't wrap everything up too neatly at the end, and I think it's a big compliment to hear that a reader is left wanting more. After each novel, I hear from many readers asking for a sequel— they say they just have to find out what will happen to these people next. I think it's wonderful that the characters have come to life for them. But, for now, I think I'll grow more as a writer by trying to create another group of quirky characters. Maybe a few books down the road, I'll feel ready to return to some of them—who knows?
• When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is what she said:
I get asked this question a lot on book tour, and I'm always tempted to say anything by Jane Austen or Alice Munro, just so people will know I'm well read, and sometimes I'm even tempted to say something by Gogol, just so people will think I'm really, really well read. But, alas, ultimately I tell the truth. The Nancy Drew books influenced me the most. I think they taught me a lot about pacing, and about ending chapters in such a way that the reader just can't put the book down and absolutely has to read on to the next chapter. I also think these books are responsible for the fact that I can't, for the life of me, write a chapter that's much longer than ten pages.
There's another variation of this question that I'm asked all the time on book tour: Who are your favorite authors? I always answer it the same way: My favorite authors are the ones who've been nice to me. It's so important for established authors to take emerging authors under their wings. Two who've been particularly generous to me as mentors and friends are Mameve Medwed and Jeanne Ray. Fortunately, they both happen to be very talented—and funny—so if you've somehow missed their books, you should read them immediately.
(Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Laugh-out-loud novel.... A light and lively read for anyone who has tried to reenter the dating scene—or tried to ‘fix up’ somebody else.
Boston Herald
A wry look at contemporary courtship rituals, as well as a warm portrayal of a large Irish-American family.
St. Louis Dispatch
Following up on themes from her debut novel, Ready to Fall, which looked at the pitfalls of cyberspace romance, Cook here chronicles the perils of various tried and true dating ploys, from personals ads to the use of adorable pooches as date bait. "If I didn't have a job, I might have stayed in bed until I rotted," muses Massachusetts preschool teacher Sarah Hurlihy, almost 41, divorced and dateless for two years. She's out to change all that when she bravely answers a personals ad in a local paper, but instead gets the ultimate nightmarish response her would-be date turns out to be her widower father, something her sprawling Irish Catholic family naturally finds wildly funny. Her oldest sister, Carol, decides the best way for Sarah to move on is to create her own personals ad, and soon Sarah's love life is lively, if not downright rambunctious. "God hates glib," "God hates ugly" and "God hates a smarty-pants" are all standards in the Hurlihy family lexicon, but Cook employs just enough glibness and smarty-pants humor to make this tart slice-of-the-single-life worth reading. As for "ugly," Sarah also learns some serious lessons about what the word really means and it's not a prospective suitor's nose hairs, his bald pate or his beer-belly bulge. Breezy first-person narration makes this a fast-paced, humorous diversion.
Publishers Weekly
This utterly charming novel...is a fun read, perfect for whiling away an afternoon on the beach. Sarah Hurlihy is 40 years old, divorced, and happily teaching preschoolers a multicultural curriculum. But her interfering, overzealous Boston Irish family thinks that she should be dating, and with much love she is pushed into answering a personal ad from a gentleman seeking a lady "who enjoys elegant dining, dancing and the slow bloom of affection"; the clincher is that he's a man who "loves dogs." That man turns out to be the last man on earth any woman would want to date, but Sarah pushes on, slowly falling headlong into the dating game with decidedly mixed results. Meanwhile, Sarah's widowed father has his own dating troubles, brother Michael is deep in marital problems, and sister Carol is having difficulty at home with her temperamental teenage daughter, who turns to her favorite aunt for comfort and body-piercing support. Somehow, they all seem to end up on Sarah's doorstep at the most inopportune moments, keeping the laughs going all the way to the not-quite-storybook-perfect ending. Suitable for all public libraries. —Stacy Alesi, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., Boca Raton
Library Journal
It's raining men, family, humor, and tragicomic angst in Cook's latest novel for older fans of Bridget Jones.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. What scene in Must Love Dogs made you laugh the hardest?
2. What gave you the biggest jolt of recognition?
3. What was your favorite "recipe" in the novel? Did you try it?
4. How would Must Love Dogs change if it were written from Carol's point of view? From Dolly's? From John Anderson's? Is there another character who might have narrated as effectively as Sarah?
5. Which traits of the Hurlihy family are shared by all families, and which are unique to them? Does your own family have a quirky little something that might have fit in with the story? One that would top them?
6. Have you or any of your friends ever dated through the personals? Would you be more or less likely to after reading Must Love Dogs?
7. Was it ethically/morally responsible for Claire Cook to place a phony personal ad in the name of research? Would it have been over the line to have responded to one? Should Claire have called the respondents and apologized, or was it sufficient to recycle their phone numbers to her single friends? Do you think she still has those phone numbers?
8. In the book, Sarah asks John Anderson, "What makes you think something's wrong with you?" Do you agree that people who are single often begin to think that something is wrong with them? If you've been single, was that true for you? Is there a version of this that applies to couples?
9. What are some of the ways in which people or society in general makes single people feel like second class citizens? How has that changed for women, and men, over the last several decades?
10. Some readers find Sarah's father, Billy Hurlihy, both lovable and exasperating. Based on what we know of his marriage to Sarah's mother, and his current love life, what do you think of him, especially as a husband and father? Is he likely to remarry?
11. As a preschool teacher, Sarah spends her days surrounded by children. As a member of a large, close-knit family, she is often in the company of her nieces and nephews. Do you think this makes it harder or easier for her to come to terms with the fact that she might not have her own children?
12. Would you want your own child to be in Sarah Hurlihy's classroom at Bayberry Preschool? Why or why not?
13. Claire Cook always wanted to be a novelist, yet didn't go after her dream until she was in her forties. Was she wise to wait until she'd had more life experience, or should she have had the courage to pursue her dream earlier? Do you think either path would have led her to the same place? What does that inspire you to achieve in your own life?
(Questions from the author's webpage.)