Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour: A Novel [Paperback]

John Blumenthal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2004

A hysterical new novel from the author of What's Wrong with Dorfman?

Once a gangly teenager in oversized clothes, Plato G. Fussell is now handsome and independently wealthy. But inside he's still a bundle of neuroses and anxieties, with a tendency to engage in moronic word games in the presence of beautiful women.

In the midst of working on his definitive ten-volume biography of Millard Fillmore, Plato finds himself dodging his vile ex-wife, trying to please his demanding elderly mother by inquiring weekly about the state of her bowels, and attempting to remain verbally coherent while courting a young woman whom he meets after her errant Frisbee connects with his cranium.

As Plato blunders on in search of true love, romance, and an acceptable degree of worldwide cleanliness, he discovers that loving someone and knowing them needn't go hand-in-hand.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Blumenthal (What's Wrong with Dorfman?) keeps the energy high, the expectations low and the yuks coming fast in this funny but strangely static novel. Plato G. Fussell is a neurotic, self-made millionaire working on a 10-volume biography of President Millard Fillmore. Painfully awkward around women and prone to embarrassing verbal gaffes, Fussell also doesn't believe in love. And what happens to people who don't believe in love? They fall head over heels, of course. Insert a raven-haired beauty with the same penchant for hypochondria as Plato, and we have a match. The problem is, she's the recently estranged spouse of Fussell's psychiatrist, Dr. Wang. For a while, it's fun to watch Fussell play his shrink like a fiddle, searching for information, but Blumenthal drags this plot out past its life span. Smartly, he brings in other diversions: the twilight-time escapades of Fussell's mother, a bowel-obsessed harpy, and his father, a bore who turns out to be anything but, prove to be cunning distractions—but only for so long. Blumenthal is excellent at keeping several plots going at once but the most important one peters out, only to be resurrected, sort of, by a surprising but artificial ending, a resounding thud at the end of a book that, for the most part, kept the proceedings pleasurably light and snappy.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

At the very thought of talking to women, anxiety-ridden, death-obsessed, insecure, indecisive Plato Fussell falls into wordplay, spontaneously speaking in spoonerisms and reversing the letters of words. His tall, handsome, successful appearance masks an inner short, myopic "Superdork" with ill-fitting clothes and braces. Add to that his favorite conversational ploy--forgotten American presidents, especially Millard Fillmore--and he makes the young Woody Allen seem a confident babe magnet. At his psychiatrist's annual doctor-patient picnic in Van Nuys, a purple Frisbee thrown by a stunning young woman conks him, and before you can say "Isabella" (his dog's name) and "Ferdinand" (her dog's name), he's smitten and winds up bedding her--regularly. But she's the shrink's wife. Subsequent complications in Blumenthal's engagingly written comic romance include Plato's dealings with ex-wife Daisy, who cheated him out of a fortune she claims, after having lost almost a million at Vegas crap tables, to have given mostly to charity. Loopy humor keeps things entertaining in this tale that screams to be filmed. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; First Edition edition (August 12, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312323689
• ISBN-13: 978-0312323684
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,460,072 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A former Playboy magazine editor and columnist, John Blumenthal is the author "The Official Hollywood Handbook", "The Tinseltown Murders", "The Case of the Hardboiled Dicks", "Hollywood High: The History of America's Most Famous Public School", "Love's Reckless Rash" (co-author) and the novels "What's Wrong with Dorfman?" and "Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour", both BookSense76 Picks. His work has appeared in such publications as "TV Guide", "Punch", "Playboy", "Oui", "Today's Health", "The Los Angeles Times", "The Christian Science Monitor", "Autograph Collector", and "Publishers Weekly".

He has also written for television and is the co-author of the movies "Blue Streak" and "Short Time". His blog posts appear regularly on Huffington Post.

A new novel,"Three and a Half Virgins" has just been published.

www.ThreeandaHalfVirgins.net

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Most Interesting Psychological Romance!, December 23, 2004

By 

Epstein LaRue "RN, BS, Traveling Nurse, Educa... (Southeast Idaho, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour: A Novel (Paperback)

After being damaged to the core by his high school sweetheart, Plato Fussell has given up on love.  Between being rich and obsessive compulsive, Plato knows that finding someone that honestly loves him will be nearly impossible.

When love finds Mr. Fussell again, it is with another obsessive compulsive patient...    whom he finds out just happens to be his psychiatrist soon to be ex-wife.

Once you add the health problems of his father, his mother's wild antics - this book will keep you giggling for hours.
As a nurse and romance author who worked with psychiatric patients for almost two years, it was not hard at all to picture this family and all their little quirks. 

I really connected with this book also in the fact the I graduated from High School the same year as Plato Fussell.  I could imagine very vividly his High School years and what was going on at the time in the world.

Mr. Blumenthal does an excellent job in portraying these serious psychological problems into a book full of hilarious antics.  One of the most interesting psychological romances that I have ever read!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious and quirky, April 3, 2005

By 

J. Chung - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour: A Novel (Paperback)

This isn't your casual love story. This is a story about a slightly eccentric Plato G. Fussell, rich, handsome, and a bit obsessive-compulsive. I loved the storyline as it was rich in great detail and Blumenthal's use of puns kept me smiling throughout the entire novel. Moreover, Plato becomes such a lovable character that you don't realize how crazy he really is! I enjoyed this book because it is lighthearted, and carries a somewhat whimsical tone. It is a story that will warm your heart as it has warmed mine.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully Entertaining, November 30, 2004

By 

An English Major (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour: A Novel (Paperback)

If Woody Allen were still making funny movies, they would be a lot like John Blumenthal's books: full of hilarity, wisdom and the quirkiest characters this side of a Tom Robbins novel.
In his latest, we meet Plato G. Fussell, a garden variety neurotic who happens to be writing the definitive 10 volume biography of America's most forgotten President, Millard Fillmore. Plato, who believes that romantic love is nothing but hogwash, has a slight problem meeting women: he tends to speak gibberish in their presence, an uncontrollable tick of some sort. He spouts spoonerisms and says names backwards. But when he happens to meet the delectable Emily Thorndyke, a woman afflicted with a whole other set of equally interesting neuroses, he can't help but fall in love with her, in spite of his dismissal of romantic love as "a monstrous flimflam perpetrated on the gullible masses by a cabal of soulless profiteers."
The book has more than a few unexpected twists and turns and kept me guessing the whole time. And the ending is a marvelously crafted surprise. But Blumenthal is more than just a simple comedy writer - his novels tell us something profound about the human condition and "Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour" is no exception.