The Blackmailer's Guide to Love : A Novel
Author(s): Marian Thurm
Chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best books of fiction of 2021
One of the many well-educated Ivy League graduates with literary ambitions who flock to New York City every year, 25-year-old Melissa Fleischer has the great fortune to work as the assistant to Austin Bloch, an editor responsible for refining and publishing the work of some of America’s most esteemed writers. But after she begins working at this prestigious magazine in the late 1970’s, Mel soon learns that the extravagantly long lunches her boss indulges in actually belie 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.
But then, unexpectedly, the New Yorker begins publishing 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 both by Mel’s deeply painful discovery that her own marriage—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.
Review(s):
“Sparkling. . .[with] a bouncy roman à clef charm.”
“A juicy roman à clef sympathetically imagines two young women on opposite sides of an extramarital affair. . . . Beautifully written, both sharp and bighearted, funny and true.”
"Clever, surprising plots developments abound, and exquisitely drawn characters have their perceptions radically changed when they are forced to confront temptations, conflicts and unexpected challenges. Thurm's literary authority is on full display in this deeply engrossing and dramatically juicy novel."
"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."
“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.”
“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.”
"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."
Praise for Today Is Not Your Day: "Wry, elegant stories, à la Lorrie Moore and Amy Bloom… Thurm’s long-awaited new collection, again chronicling the frustrations and heartbreaks of contemporary domestic relationships with a brilliantly light touch. Thurm hits the funny/sad spot every time, whether the subject is bereavement, divorce, betrayal, or some other form of abandonment.”
“With its concise and insightful prose and pitch-perfect dialogue, this is a collection to savor.”
“Marian Thurm is either a movingly compassionate observer of human foibles or a charmingly ruthless one. The best stories in her fourth collection suggest that she is both… [with] her keen gift for portraying the slippery, comical psychology of people who have a tough time believing this is how their lives have gotten kicked out from under them. She makes it all look effortless, and that’s no easy task.”
ISBN: 9781953002006