In 1970s New York, a woman finds professional success and personal disillusionment: “Sparkling . . . Looks back on the heyday of glossy magazine publishing.” —Publishers Weekly
One of the many Ivy League graduates with literary ambitions who flock to New York City every year, twenty-five-year-old Melissa Fleischer has the great fortune to be hired as the assistant to high-profile magazine editor Austin Bloch. But after she begins her career with the prestigious publication, Mel learns the extravagantly long lunches her boss often indulges in are actually disguising his affairs with a stream of young women. Mel is left in the distressing position of lying about these never-ending betrayals to Austin’s wife, Hillarie, who often calls while he is out of the office.
Then, unexpectedly, the New Yorker begins printing Mel’s short stories, offering a spectacular start to what she hopes will be a long and fruitful writing career. Unfortunately, the exhilaration of being published by the magazine she reveres most is soon diminished—by both Mel’s deeply painful discovery that her own relationship, like Austin’s, is far from idyllic, and her continuing complicity in Austin’s betrayals. And nothing seems more difficult than the effort it will take to keep her marriage from falling apart in this novel by an author who “writes so brilliantly of the battle of the sexes” (The New York Times Book Review).
Genre: Literary Fiction
One of the many Ivy League graduates with literary ambitions who flock to New York City every year, twenty-five-year-old Melissa Fleischer has the great fortune to be hired as the assistant to high-profile magazine editor Austin Bloch. But after she begins her career with the prestigious publication, Mel learns the extravagantly long lunches her boss often indulges in are actually disguising his affairs with a stream of young women. Mel is left in the distressing position of lying about these never-ending betrayals to Austin’s wife, Hillarie, who often calls while he is out of the office.
Then, unexpectedly, the New Yorker begins printing Mel’s short stories, offering a spectacular start to what she hopes will be a long and fruitful writing career. Unfortunately, the exhilaration of being published by the magazine she reveres most is soon diminished—by both Mel’s deeply painful discovery that her own relationship, like Austin’s, is far from idyllic, and her continuing complicity in Austin’s betrayals. And nothing seems more difficult than the effort it will take to keep her marriage from falling apart in this novel by an author who “writes so brilliantly of the battle of the sexes” (The New York Times Book Review).
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Through her wide-eyed young heroine, Thurm wonderfully conveys the fantasies, disillusions, and vanities of literary New York in the late 1970s. Her biting sketches of the era's key figures bring that lost world alive in granular detail." - Andrea Barrett
"If Dorothy Parker had tried writing Fatal Attraction, she might have come up with something like this wonderfully wry roman à clef about New York's overheated literary world in the 70s. Although Marian Thurm is a far more compassionate observer of human nature, and her appealingly troubled characters, by turns funny, touching and unsettling, are completely her own." - Suzanne Berne
"Thurm spins a story about love and ambition, and the cost of both, focusing on a desperate-to-be-known writer, her philandering boss, her confused, straying husband, and the wily paramour who's out to blackmail him. Smart, savvy, heartbreakingly funny, and oh so wise, with prose like sparklers on every page. Writers are going to absolutely adore this book, but hey, so will everyone else on the planet." - Caroline Leavitt
"This is the book I needed and adored. With writing so beautiful; but wait--don't mistake 'beautiful' for 'at the expense of storytelling'--because A Blackmailer's Guide to Love gave me characters so real, so sympathetic, so human, that their good and bad deeds made for compulsive, rewarding, delicious reading. When you can't wait to tell your novel-loving friends about the treat they have in store, that is the test of true book love." - Elinor Lipman
"If Dorothy Parker had tried writing Fatal Attraction, she might have come up with something like this wonderfully wry roman à clef about New York's overheated literary world in the 70s. Although Marian Thurm is a far more compassionate observer of human nature, and her appealingly troubled characters, by turns funny, touching and unsettling, are completely her own." - Suzanne Berne
"Thurm spins a story about love and ambition, and the cost of both, focusing on a desperate-to-be-known writer, her philandering boss, her confused, straying husband, and the wily paramour who's out to blackmail him. Smart, savvy, heartbreakingly funny, and oh so wise, with prose like sparklers on every page. Writers are going to absolutely adore this book, but hey, so will everyone else on the planet." - Caroline Leavitt
"This is the book I needed and adored. With writing so beautiful; but wait--don't mistake 'beautiful' for 'at the expense of storytelling'--because A Blackmailer's Guide to Love gave me characters so real, so sympathetic, so human, that their good and bad deeds made for compulsive, rewarding, delicious reading. When you can't wait to tell your novel-loving friends about the treat they have in store, that is the test of true book love." - Elinor Lipman
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