Love Is a Canoe by Ben Schrank

Love Is A Canoe by Ben Schrank
Published by Sarah Crichton Books FSG ISBN 978-0-374-19249-5
Hardcover, $26, 340 pages

I have read a few books lately whose topic is that marriage is not what it seems. Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl shows us the remnants of a bad marriage through the unreliable eyes of both spouses. Chris Pavone's The Expats uses the spy game as a metaphor for how little we really know how our own spouse.

Ben Schrank's novel Love Is a Canoe has a different take. Peter Herman wrote a hugely successful self-help book titled Love Is a Canoe, filled with the wisdom his loving grandparents shared with him as a teen. They taught him the importance of being respectful, treating the person you love with kindness, and many other bromides.

Peter fell in love with a young girl one summer when he was with his grandparents, and following his grandparents' advice, he pursued this girl and eventually married her. They bought an inn and restaurant in upstate New York and lived a happy life.

His wife fell ill and died, and now Peter is dating someone. He hasn't written anything else, and his publishing company has reissued his book many times, still selling a few copies here and there.

Stella is a young editor at the publishing house trying to move up the ladder. She comes up with an idea for a contest where couples would write in asking for marital advice. The winner would spend the day with Peter, stay at his inn and get some helpful guidance from him.

There were a few problems: Peter has had little contact with his publisher over the years, and they had to find just the right couple. Only one couple fits the bill- Emily and Eli. They have been happily married, until Eli cheated on Emily with a work colleague. Will Peter be able to help them? Stella's career depends on it.

There is a lot of inside stuff about working at a publishing house. The woman who is running the company is feared by all, and she was the editor on Peter's book. Schrank works for Penguin publishing and he shows us the pitch meetings, the jockeying for position, and the day-to-day inner workings. It is great fun to read, and this was my favorite part of the book.

This book surprised me with where it was going, and I truly like that in a novel. Taking that ride and not knowing where we'd end up was exciting. People are not necessarily who we have been led to believe, and things are not as they always appear.

The characters are well-drawn, although I thought people were too hard on Stella, ascribing character flaws to her that I do not believe she had. Schrank juggled the various storylines- Peter, Stella at the publishing house and Emily and Eli's marriage- so well that each one of these stories could have made for an interesting book. He brings them together skillfully.

In the end, my general feelings about self-help books were vindicated, but I'm not going to tell you what they are for that would ruin the ending of this wonderful book.

Ben Schrank has a website devoted to his book here.

rating 4 of 5

Mad Women by Jane Maas

Mad Women: The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the '60s and Beyond by Jane Maas
Published by Thomas Dunne Books ISBN 978-0-312-64023-1
Hardcover, $24.99

If you want to get in the mood for the return of Mad Men this Sunday, pick up a copy of Jane Maas' memoir of life on Madison Ave. in the 1960s.  She is a real-life Peggy Olson, who worked her way up the ladder from copywriter to creative director to eventually owner of her own advertising agency.

Maas worked for advertising guru David Ogilvy at his agency, and her descriptions of life on Madison Avenue-the constant cigarette smoking, drinking at work and office sex- validate the writers of Mad Men. She has some amusing anecdotes, but as one of the few working mothers at Ogilvy, her observations about working when most of the other moms stayed home with their children are informative. Her older daughter, four years senior to the younger daughter, recalled all the things her mother missed, but the younger daughter was proud to have a working mom.

Jane's husband Michael was an enlightened man who fully supported his wife's career. And then there is Mabel, the woman who lived with the family during the week and cared for the children and the household. Without Mabel, Jane would not have been able to have a career. What did working mothers who did not have the money to afford a caretaker do back then? Daycare was not an option.

Maas interviewed other women who worked in advertising to get their observations. One thing I found interesting was that at one agency, when the women got promoted from secretary to copywriter, they started wearing their hats in the office- all day. It was "a badge. It proclaimed that you were no longer a secretary."  The male copywriters had their own private dining room, but the women couldn't eat there. They were served lunch at their desks by their secretaries. And they ate with their hats on.

Maas was a key person on one of the most successful advertising campaigns ever, the I Love New York campaign. I found this section of the book utterly fascinating. Maas worked closely with Governor Hugh Carey, and he was so impressed with her work, he asked her to plan his wedding, although she had never done anything like that before.

Leona Helmsley, the so-called Queen of Mean, offers to back Maas in an agency of her own, and that turns out to be a big mistake. Helmsley offers to introduce Maas to her important friends and to help make her agency a huge success, but in the end, she treated Maas as poorly as she treated most people who worked for her. Helmsley is larger-than-life and not in a good way. Let's just say everything you have ever heard about her is true and then some.

Mad Women is a fabulous look at what it was like to work in a mostly-male domain of advertising in the 1960s. Maas is a terrific writer, and being a copywriter, she knows how to say a lot with a few words, and make those few words have a punch. It's the perfect book to get you in the mood for the start of season five of Mad Men.

rating 4 of 5 stars

Playdate by Thelma Adams

Playdate by Thelma Adams
Published by Thomas Dunne Books ISBN 978-0-312-65666-9
Hardcover $23.99

Since I moved to New York City a few years ago, I have read a lot of fiction set there. So when an opportunity to review a book set in San Diego arose, a city I visited a few years ago and loved, I was happy to do so.

Playdate by Thelma Adams, who lives in upstate New York and is the film critic for US Weekly magazine, tells the story of Lance, Darlene and their ten-year-old daughter Belle. They have just moved to Encinitas from Barstow because Darlene is opening a  restaurant with a new partner, Alex, who lives in their new neighborhood.

Lance gave up his job as a TV weatherman in Barstow, and now he takes care of Belle and runs their new household. Darlene is spending a great deal of time with the demanding Alex, who has a plan to turn Darlene's Diner into a chain of restaurants like Marie Callender.

Belle is not happy with the move. In Barstow she had friends and spent time out in the great outdoors. Encinitas is the "land of playdates, where every encounter is staged and scheduled". There are mean girls, led by Jade, who make her life very difficult. Jade and her friends even make fun of Lance because he is a stay-at-home dad and he runs the Girl Scout cookie drive.

Lance is happy spending more time with Belle; they have a very close relationship that feels authentic. But his marriage to Darlene is suffering. She is all about work, and while Lance is home all day, he has strayed into a series of "playdates" with Wren, his neighbor and Alex's wife.

The best part of the book is Lance and Belle's relationship. They are a loving father and daughter, and these two characters are the most well drawn of all. I can't say the same of Darlene; I felt like I didn't know her as well, maybe because the story centers more on Lance and Belle. I didn't really understand her very well at all.

The only secondary character that had much dimension to her was Wren's nanny Julia, who has the hots for Lance. Julia has a hard edge to her, but at least she was interesting. You could really feel Lance's discomfort at Julia's aggressive attempts at seduction.

I wouldn't give Playdates my highest recommendation, but it was worth reading for the warm, loving father-daughter relationship between Lance and Belle. It's not one you see very often.

rating 3 of 5