Customer Reviews

Five Men Who Broke My Heart: A Memoir

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Have you ever wanted to look up an old love and find out exactly what went wrong? Well, free-lance writer Susan Shapiro did it....five times! Now happily married, but facing a no-book, no-baby summer and turning 40 to boot has made her take a hard look at her life and what went wrong. Her brutal honesty, self-deprecation, and poignant memories will leave you laughing and crying.

Why is it we have this need to rediscover lost love? Is it to make us feel younger, as she so wisely muses. Is it to reaffirm we married the right guy, after all? Or is it just to make sure all those heartbreakers from the past are now fat, bald, and miserable? No matter the reason, you'll enjoy Susan's trip down memory lane and the feeling of nostalgia that engulfs her before she finally comes to terms with the one man who influenced her entire life.

In this memoir, Susan Shapiro says that she has spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on therapy. As a lucky reader, I was able to mooch off of all of her sessions! Shapiro has had more problems with men than J. Lo, but unlike Ms. Lopez, she's not all uptight about talking to the media about it. That's probably because Shapiro IS the media--a freelance writer, to be precise--and her book reads like one of those great, chatty columns in the back of Sunday magazines that always ends too quickly, forcing you to flip back to the cover story on Donald Rumsfeld. Luckily, "Five Men" is a whole lotta pages, and how quickly they flew by for me! All of the "official" reviews provide great summaries, so I won't go there. I will say, however, that this is such a fun, honest, and well-written book. Seriously. I'm really not that enthusiastic a person, I just really liked it.

Susan Shapiro has the voice of a contemporary female Woody Allen -- she's written the long-overdue "High Fidelity" for women, fearlessly and hilariously accounting the true story of the relationships she's had with most important men in her life, from boyfriends to father to brothers to husband. She's tough on the men, but most critical of herself. Most of all, she proves to all women that the right relationship is worth working for and waiting for. Can't wait to see the movie!

I really loved Five Men Who Broke My Heart--what a great memoir Susan Shapiro has given us--so honest, so funny. Reading this one is like sitting down with your best friend as she recounts running into an old flame--like gossip, only somehow more fun. Shapiro decided to revisit all of her past loves after Brad--her old boyfriend from college and then some resurfaced in her life. The memoir opens as she is trying to decide what to wear. It's a funny scene and it sets the stage for the honest, open and very funny book. She manages to track down the other four men in her love history she considered major heartbreakers and the memoir recounts everything--the courtships, the relationships, the breakups. We finally get to the sixth guy--Aaron, the one who didn't break her heart, the one she married, and it all makes sense. Shapiro shares much with us--she is a brave woman--I don't know many who would air their secrets as she did, but thank goodness she did. This is a fun, entertaining read. Share it with your best girlfriends, they will love it.

Certainly a readable if not exactly cohesive collection of writings...the author is fast and clever enough with words to keep a reader moving along...but all in all, not much here that hasn't been done better elsewhere. The author's compulsive, relentless personality probably makes her a good journalist but for this reader, that urgent, breathless, tell-all tone doesn't cut it in a book-length work. Plus the book is verbose, and padded (like her bras) with too many details (did we need to know the color of all those Pashmina scarves? or what size shoes she wears?) about food, clothing, music, parties, food, e-mails, and cars. Yawn.

Kiss of Death: I didn't laugh out loud even once.

Glad I borrowed this one from the public library. I'd be annoyed if I had paid for it.

Although the premise is interesting, the resulting memoir is less than satisfying. I found it neither humorous nor heartening, and altogether pointless. The author seems more concerned with appearances than with real depth and insight.

I find it hard to believe that this book has gotten such raving reviews; it's unsettling to imagine what else people are reading if this book is considered five star.

So much of what you find in a book is what you bring to it when you read it. I liked this book a whole lot--enough to recommend it to several friends because I thought it was a good example of looking honestly at your past to see how you got where you are now. Several times I wanted to shout at the young Susan, "Grow up and quit being so melodramatic!" But that's what I wish I could shout back through time at my own young self, as well. In the end, you are what you are, and what you've done has made you into the person you are today. I identified with Susan's propensity for choosing the wrong man and for shutting down good relationships for bad ones. She does grow up, though, and this walk through her youth was honest. She doesn't pull any punches, even for herself. It was very well written, if sometimes a little frustrating (it's really hard to watch people make mistakes in slow motion). If I had a daughter, I'd give her this and "He's Just Not That Into You" as good instruction manuals.

I'm sorry, I picked up this book because I hoped I would be able to find myself in it--I am also a big city girl (Chi-town) who somehow managed to marry the wrong man (I am now divorced).
I was looking for a book that would make me laugh, and also explain what I had done wrong and how not to make the same mistake next time.
Well, I could not find myself in Shapiro's book. I could not find ANYONE but Susan Shapiro. This woman has an ego bigger than Lake Michigan. It's all mememememe.
No wonder Susan has had such hard luck with men! Her husband must be a saint (or a masochist.) The whole raison d'etre of Shapiro's book is that she was enraged that someone would NOT marry her. She can't figure out why someone would not like her, when really she's just completely self-obsessed.
Susan Shapiro should PAY OTHER PEOPLE to listen to (or read) this egomaniacal rant.

There are few writers today writing with such wit, talent, sincerity, and purity of emotion. Like the brilliant journalist that she is, Shapiro investigates the most difficult story of all: love (in all its forms). Whether it's her honesty, willingness to love, strong sense of self, skills as a writer and journalist, or the men in her life that we have to thank, I don't know...but I do know that all of the above culminated into a book that I simply could not put down. "Five Men Who Broke My Heart" captures the ageless struggles between woman and lover, woman and husband, woman and mother, and goes one step further to capture the struggle of contemporary woman, and her desire to find a balance between career and family. Not only do the stories flow in and out of each other seamlessly, but Shapiro's sense of timing is immaculate, as she knows exactly when to make you cry, and when to make you laugh. I look forward to seeing more by this author, and possibly even encountering these characters again...

If you like reading about relationships, and why and how they go wrong (or even work), I think you will enjoy Five Men Who Broke My Heart.

Susan Shapiro does not hold back as she excavates the five loves of her life and how they went wrong. Anyone who's ever "Googled" an ex may have dreamed about taking that next step and actually phoning them up, and asking them what went wrong...now you can do that vicariously, in a way, through Shapiro's book.

I liked how Shapiro shared the details of her former relationships, especially all the little things that grated on either party after the initial thrill had worn off.

I found Shapiro to be a talented writer whose words are engaging and can bring a smile to your face. But I found some of the wittiest or most memorable phrasings coming from the other characters in the book. Her boyfriends all seem to have a very good idea of what makes her tick, and most go along with her e-mail or in-person interviews. The things they say about her, or about why the relationship in question went wrong, may get you thinking about the other perspective in your own relationships.

In the end, it seems one boyfriend summed it up in asking, why do you need any kind of approval from me, when you've accomplished these professional goals? This is something she seems to realize later as well.

Other questions the book raises: why and how does she compete with her mother's choices, in terms of family and career? What are the issues in deciding to have a family in later life, especially if one person in the marriage wants it and the other doesn't? How do you feel when your ex'es are going through marriages, babies, successes, divorces? How do they react toward your successes (or not-so-successes, as the case may be)? Shapiro also shares intimate details of her and her husband's struggle to conceive and deal with the consequences thereof.

All in all, an engaging entry into the world of women's memoir, in my opinion.

Julia Wilkinson, author, My Life at AOL