Must Love Dogs: A Novel [Hardcover]

Claire Cook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2002

Claire Cook's beguilingly original Ready to Fall struck a vibrant chord with its "perky take on midlife angst" (Publishers Weekly). In Must Love Dogs she gives us a contemporary Everywoman in a big rollicking south-of-Boston Irish family-a zany novel with the flavor of Nora Ephron, Susan Isaacs, and Jeanne Ray's Julie and Romeo.

Forty-year-old Sarah Hurlihy, a divorced preschool teacher whose life is her classroom, is about to meet her first date in more than a decade. It was the "Loves Dogs" that hooked her in the personal ad, and now she is scanning her neighborhood café for the man with a yellow rose. And find him she does, but he's the last person on earth she expects to find there . . .

In Must Love Dogs, hilarious missteps abound. Sarah's widowed father, Billy Hurlihy, with six adult kids, is seeing at least two women. And he and Sarah aren't the only Hurlihys with romantic challenges. Her brother Michael, for one, has a rocky marriage that Mother Teresa, his St. Bernard, just may put over the edge. With self-deprecating humor and a laugh-out-loud view of the way we live now, including shar pei/Labrador crosses and a transgenerational body-piercing experience, Must Love Dogs is a perfect beach read that melts the heartache of dating with warmth and humor.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This utterly charming second novel by Cook (Ready To Fall) 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,
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (July 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670031062
• ISBN-13: 978-0670031061
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #651,820 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I can't believe I have 8 novels, with a 9th, Wallflower in Bloom, coming from Simon & Schuster Touchstone in June 2012! I also have one husband, two kids, one dog, and 7 brothers and sisters and I'm the bestselling author of Best Staged Plans, Seven Year Switch, The Wildwater Walking Club, Summer Blowout, Life's a Beach, Multiple Choice, Ready to Fall, and Must Love Dogs, which became a Warner Bros. movie starring Diane Lane and John Cusack.

I hope you'll visit http://ClaireCook.com, where you can read excerpts of all my novels and find book club questions. And make sure you check out my writing and reinvention pages, where I share everything I've learned so far.

Come hang out with me on my Facebook author page, too: http://www.facebook.com/ClaireCookauthorpage.

And follow me at http://Twitter.com/ClaireCookwrite. I'll follow you back!

Okay, here's the rest of my story:

After decades of procrastination, I wrote my first novel in my minivan outside my daughter's swim practice at five in the morning. It was published when I was 45, and at 50 I walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the adaptation of my second novel. Midlife rocks! I love telling my story, because I think so many women (and a few good men!) have buried dreams like mine. My advice: dust them off and go for it!

I love speaking to groups, and teaching reinvention workshops for women coming into their own at midlife. I love writing novels and feel incredibly lucky to get to do it for a living -- this is the career I almost didn't have!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As Much Fun as a New Puppy, October 4, 2003

By 

Mamalinde "mamalinde" (Dallas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Must Love Dogs (Mass Market Paperback)

Laugh out loud funny, this book is as much fun as a brand new puppy (without the messy cleanup and chewed up shoes). Claire Cook takes us on a life journey with Sarah Hurlihy, 40 year old divorcee, pre-school teacher, and member of a large, wild and rowdy Irish American family. In her first foray into the world of personal ads, Sarah manages to select a Mr. Right who is none other than her own widowed father. Will she have any better luck when her sound-alike sister writes a personal ad for Sarah, and records a voice message? The importance of family relationships and the dysfunction of same glows through every single page in this delightful and frothy little book. Fun, uplifting, and insightful, I highly recommend this charming book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty bad, July 10, 2008

By 

Invisible Moth 814 "jdm" (Northeast United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Must Love Dogs (Paperback)

I wasn't spurred to see the movie. While I'm familiar with the Irish Boston area family (being originally from that area myself, and then having spent a fair amount of time around the Irish from Ireland), and while "Must Love Dogs" got that pretty right, the rest of the story...well, really didn't get anything right. Usual tale of failure: flat characters, boring narration, trite humor, dull plot points. Don't give this one a try.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great beginning - flat ending, August 31, 2005

By 

Maureen E. Eustis (East Greenwich, RI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Must Love Dogs (Mass Market Paperback)

I loved the beginning and middle of this book. I began to think I didn't want it to end because it was so entertaining. I thought the writing was honest, and clever. But toward the end I realized I didn't have a clear opinion as to what a "happy ending" would be. When it did end, I didn't know if the ending was the best case scenario for the main character, whom I'd come to adore. I felt her love interest's character and appeal was underdeveloped and I was left wishing for better for her... and me! Besides that, I loved the humor and honesty that shone through the rest of the book. I wish I could have written a better ending for it though.