Jill Robinson, the author of Bed/Time/Story and Past Forgetting , and her husband, Stuart Shaw, share their true story about finding love when they both had lost faith in romance. When Stuart and Jill first met, neither felt ready for love. Stuart was recovering from the alcoholism that had wrecked his marriage and ravaged his career. Jill was recovering from a second failed marriage and believed she was done with love forever. But then, in a crowded Connecticut diner, Jill caught Stuart's eye and shot him a look that she knew would draw him in. What follows is a sexy journey toward commitment told from both points of his and hers.
Robinson (Star Country) and Shaw walked the razor's edge. Two former alcoholics (now in recovery and in their sixties), they here describe their courtship and chronicle their misspent pasts in lurid detail. The authors alternate first-person narrative, a method that quickly becomes tiresome and confusing, and their pompous, self-important tone doesn't hide their obvious desperation. This offers zero how-to advice and is a bit too confessional in nature. It presents the very personal side of the individual/couple dynamic as examined in self-help books like Martha Baldwin Beveridge's Loving Your Partner Without Losing Your Self. Of course, marriage doesn't universally equate to happiness and success, as Xavier F. Amador reminds us in Being Single in a Couples' World: How to Be Happily Single While Looking for Love. Also consider Laura Davis's I Thought We'd Never Speak Again: The Road from Estrangement to Reconciliation for a concerned, optimistic take on reconciliation. Not recommended.
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