BreakupBabe: A Novel (Paperback)

by Rebecca Agiewich (Author)
Key Phrases: gal pal, cute barista, Rebecca Agiewich, Breakup Babe, Sexy Boy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Blog: an online diary.

My Blog: How I got over the worst, most humiliating breakup in web-recorded history–and became stronger, smarter, and better off without the biggest Loser on the face of the earth.

Life is sweet for Rachel. She’s living with her boyfriend of two years in Seattle and is starting a new high-paying job at the same snazzy computer company where he works. Then Rachel’s system crashes. Her supposedly adoring almost-fiancé cheats on her, lies to her, dumps her, and hooks up with someone else–specifically, her own boss’s boss’s boss. Talk about tacky.

Heartbroken, beyond depressed, and stuck in nine-to-five hell, Rachel follows a recovery regimen that features an arsenal of meds (including General Celexa: "the holy pink pill"), deliciously detailed daily entries in her newly inaugurated weblog Breakup Babe, and a string of dates–from the irresistibly bad Little Rockclimbing Spy, who proves to be full of surprises, to the high-flying ladies man Sexy Boy, who loves weed almost as much as he loves women.

With her shoulder-perched alter egos Sensible Girl and Needy Girl vying for her sanity, and a growing legion of supportive online fans threatening to snap her out of her grand funk, Rachel somehow survives, thrives, and discovers just how risky and liberating love, loss, and blogging can be.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One



Sunday, August 11, 2002
12:58 PM Breakup Babe
Hello, my name is Breakup Babe. Tomorrow I get to go to my new job at a large Seattle software company, where my office is right down the hall from the man I thought I was going to marry, who just lied to me, cheated on me, and then dumped me on my f*cking a*s.



That was the paragraph that started it all. I had no idea that starting a free weblog called Breakup Babe would change my life. It was just something to do to keep me sane. But what I've learned in the last year is that things never turn out how you envision them. When your life cracks open, like mine did, you're messed up at first, and because of that, you do stupid things, but you also grow and change in ways you couldn't before. Then, suddenly, you're a lot closer to "happiness" than you were--even though "happiness" looks different now from what it did when some creepy-crawly bastard broke your heart.

But let's start at the beginning, shall we?

When The Great Unpleasantness (as we shall henceforth call it) struck in June 2002, one of the first thoughts that hit me was I want to start a blog about this. A few friends of mine were bloggers, and articles predicting a "blogging revolution" had just begun to appear in places such as Newsweek. But I didn't want to revolutionize anything. I just wanted a place to vent.

Why I chose the Internet rather than writing in the diaries I'd been sighing and moaning in since age thirteen, I'm not sure. I'd been writing in semi-obscurity for years, being paid to write bland freelance pieces and slaving away on a book that sucked, though I could not yet pinpoint the reason for its suckiness. So I think I was just ready to be heard in my own voice--to write something that was not a fluffy newspaper travel article or a trying-too-hard book that I was afraid to show people anyway.

It was a hot August day when I sat down to type the first entry in the upstairs bedroom of my friends Jane and Henry's town house. I'd been "sleeping" there for the last month (if you could call my tortured, nightly, horizontal sessions sleeping), ever since my once-so-devoted boyfriend had kicked me--begging and pleading for mercy--out of his waterfront home ("Lake Washington lapping at your backyard!" the listing had said) onto the streets of Seattle.

A month before that unceremonious event, when The Great Unpleasantness actually began, I'd set up a site on Blogger.com and toyed with blog names like "Relationship Hell" or "Breakup Girl." Eventually I'd settled on "Breakup Babe." But, amid the emotional turmoil of The Great Unpleasantness, I couldn't write about the actual breakup. I was too busy clinging to hope, even though my once-glorious relationship was pointing nose down into the water like the Titanic. So the blog remained empty. Now that the relationship had irrevocably sunk, however, writing seemed like my only means of survival. It was the life raft that would carry me away as grief tried to drown me.

But, as I sat down on that too-sunny Sunday, a dangerous wave of self-pity swept over me. If only Jane and Henry hadn't had to be their adventuresome selves and fly off to Iceland that very morning with their two toddlers in tow! I thought it would be comforting to be at their town house, even without them, but the place felt deserted. The room was stifling, as usual, and smelled of baby and detergent. Their stuff was scattered everywhere--baby clothes, outdoor gear, toys--but without the four of them, the place was even lonelier than my new apartment with its unpacked boxes.

I stared at the computer screen, willing myself not to collapse on the hard futon next to it, where I'd spent the last month weeping. Maybe, just maybe, once I started writing, the loneliness that was stalking me, that was poised to put its sweaty hands around my neck and throttle me, would slink back to its hole.

That was my state of mind as I wrote my debut entry for Breakup Babe. I was unaware of the momentous occasion at hand. All I wanted was to get through the day, and putting words on the screen was a way to pass the time at least. That first entry went on forever. All my pent-up emotions spewed forth without a thought for the attention span of my poor audience--whoever that might end up being (though they got into the action soon enough).



So a month ago I started my new job, at a company we shall call "Empire Corporation," in a godforsaken suburb of Seattle filled with strip malls and loathsome chain restaurants.

I had to admit, the bennies rocked. I might be giving up my identity as a free-spirited artiste, but look what I got in return. Money. And lots of it.

Before I left her office on the day I accepted the job, the perky blond human resources person, "Wendii," handed me an orange and green folder with the words "Welcome to Success!" splashed across the front. It described all my benefits and contained everything I needed to know to "succeed" at working for The Man (thirty-two-year-old Rodney Rolands, CEO and international playboy) and his great company. Except, of course, the truth. There should have been one more benefit entitled:


Build Your Character
Your adoring boyfriend of two years, whose group you just signed your life away to work in, will brutally dump you within one month of the time you start your job. You will therefore have the opportunity to work down the hall from the man who lied to you, cheated on you, and broke your heart. Look forward to being challenged both personally and careerwise in ways you never dreamed possible!



Even if it had been in the brochure, and Wendii had pointed it out to me, tapping on important words for emphasis with her pearly pink nails--"dump," "cheated," "challenged"--

I wouldn't have believed that retarded sorority-girl clone anyway. Who did she think she was? That was my man she was talking about, my almost-fiancé, my one true love! The one who told me, when we first started dating, that I brought "order to the universe"!



When I looked up from the screen and saw the time, I was shocked to see that forty-five minutes had passed. What a change from these last two months when every minute that passed threatened to crush me. I was writing, really writing, for the first time in months, and time was almost slipping away.



So, on my first day on the job, into Empire Corporation I marched, proud employee, to the office right down the hall from my beloved boyfriend's (let's call him Loser), who'd sworn to me that we would never part.

And what reason did I have to suspect him? We'd just returned from a stunning sojourn to Thailand. We'd spent two blissful weeks traveling together. After that, I'd spent two weeks traveling alone, resting easy in the knowledge that he would be waiting oh-so-devotedly for me at home.

Because Loser was, after all, devoted. Any of my friends could have told you that. His steady presence had even helped me to settle down and focus on my true life's work, my raison d'être, writing the next Bridget Jones's Diary. The book I'd been struggling with for three years would make me the darling of the publishing world, if I could ever get it finished. Now that I was swapping my unpredictable contractor's lifestyle for a steady paycheck, now that I would have both a stable domestic and work life, I would finally be able to write something of quality.

When I returned from Thailand, he showered me with love. Attention. Flowers at the airport. Though always attentive, he became over-the-top adoring. I was in Deluded Girlfriend Heaven.

While sunning ourselves on the Thai beaches or trekking through the hill towns, I would make idle chitchat with Loser. "Is it really such a good idea that I took a job in your group? What if we break up?" But it was just a formality. I knew what his answer would be. "Baby," he'd say in a sweet but slightly condescending tone, as if I were a five-year-old, "we're not going to break up."

Of course not, I would think smugly. WE are going to get MARRIED. Not that we were engaged. But we'd talked about marriage from the beginning. He was the One. Handsome. Jewish. Smart. (Loaded, too, but that was merely a pleasant perk.) We conversed about everything, laughed about lots of things, and best of all, he adored me. It was true that maybe we fought a bit too much, but conflict was a part of all relationships, right? He'd even broken up with his live-in girlfriend for me! And, God damn it, I was thirty-four years old! If we broke up . . . Hell, we weren't going to break up and that was that.

So imagine my surprise when one sunny June day, a month after I'd started my new job, life as I knew it ended in an instant.

When I next stopped typing and read what I'd written, my euphoria slipped away. All I could think was God, how self-indulgent. This stuff wasn't badly written. But wasn't it incredibly narcissistic for me to put it online and think anyone else would want to read it?

I was dripping sweat now, despite my tank top and shorts. (Air conditioning does not exist in Seattle, because 95 percent of the time, we're wrapped in a 52-degree shroud of gray. But we do pay for it, when the hell fires burn, as they were this summer. My God, it was hot and sunny and all I wanted to do was crawl back into the cave of winter!) As I stared at the black words dancing on the white background, I felt the bottom start to slip out of the day again. Who was I kidding? I couldn't write worth shit. And why had I ever thought writing about Loser might ma...

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (May 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345484002
• ISBN-13: 978-0345484000
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,042,682 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pretty darn good, August 8, 2006

By	book junkie - See all my reviews

You know, there's something fundementally unappealing about the main character, Rachel. Cheated on, lied to, and dumped by her boyfriend of two years, Rachel spends an unholy amount of time obsessing over the breakup and crying in her office. For months, crying in her office. A thirty-four year old woman after a not-very-long relationship crying in her office for months. Does this strike anyone else as, well, mental? Most people need a week of sappy movies and some cookie dough-- not pharmacuticals to just get them through the day without a nervous breakdown. She sleeps with guys left and right. She gets emotionally attached if a guy looks at her with anything other than disgust. She thinks about a boy she was with for two months over a decade ago. She's pathetic! She's co-dependent! She has no ability to stand on her own two feet!

And yet she's loveable. And funny. Rachel is everything I hate about women-- but she does it with style.

I loved the incorporated blog into the text of the novel. I loved the comments from her loyal readers. I loved Lil' Rockcliming Spy and hated the Doctor. And even though her replacement names for all her characters was really annoying at first, I got used to it. Once I got started with this book, I got sucked in. The ending was very satisfactory and I closed the cover very entertained.

And that's what it's really about.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breakup Babe as time travel therapy, September 4, 2006

By	Kadie in Seattle (Seattle) - See all my reviews

As an on again/off again fan of Ms. Agiewich's blog, I couldn't help picking up her book after hearing of her many promotional appearances all around the Northwest where she's been winning fans during Q&A with her real life wit and charm. With so much positive feedback circulating through local bookstores about the warmth and humility in her live appearances, my curiosity in the life of Breakup Babe was piqued once again!

What's so great about Rebecca Aigewich's writing is her unrelenting honesty and the depth of its delivery throughout the story. By now most of us know her book stems from her once anonymous blog diary where she exposed her heartache and obsession with the drama of a teenager and the wit, and self reflection, of a woman solidly in her thirties. Her novel holds true to this courageous theme and makes for a very smart, very grown-up revisit back to my own obsessive teen years and my mid-twenties.

While those are not my favorite years to relive, especially now that I've grown myself up and am living a gentle, non-heartache riddled life, I loved the time travel with Breakup Babe by my side. Giggling constantly over Aigewichs smack-on prose, I was able to poke fun at a few of my own still tender love life bruises and reflect on how the "Sexy Boy" in my own story eventually led me to "The One".

It's true that this super funny and refreshingly arranged novel may not be for everyone. But word has it that Rebecca Aigewich is a writer's writer. So sooner or later you'll find one of her books in your lap, compelled to time travel your own life through her vision.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Breakup Babe, August 31, 2006

By	Danielle (Illinois) - See all my reviews

I just finished "Breakup Babe" today. Overall, the book is not bad. Rachel starts a blog to find release from the Loser that cheated on her when she was on vacation. I think the beginning of the novel is the best part of the book. The experiences that Rachel deals with in the first part of the novel seem to hook me in compared to the latter part of the novel. The best part for me was reading the comments that others left after Rachel submitted a blog entry. And I did relate to some of what Rachel went through. What made me give this book 4 stars and not 5 is that although Rachel is a great character, after a while her complaining about things got to be a bit much. Like her comments about how she would put links to other people's blogs but then complain how those people couldn't write or wrote boring blogs. The whiny part about Rachel got to be a little harder to take towards the end of the novel. But other than that aspect, I did enjoy reading "Breakup Babe" and it was a fast read for me. So if you're looking for a good read for that last trip to the beach or if you're starting to compile your reading pile for your Fall and Winter reading, consider looking into get this one.