Must Love Dogs by Claire Cook

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"I've lived in Marshbury all of my life, and never even knew it had a trailer park. My father was way ahead of me, of course. He'd not only located the trailer park, he'd found a woman there to date."

Forty-year-old preschool teacher Sarah Hurlihy thought she'd set herself up for a great life. She'd married the man she loved. They bought a house, decorated it, and then sat, looking at each other, trying to remember why they'd gotten married in the first place. But Sarah didn't have to wonder for long; her husband took up with a younger woman, sounding the death knell for their marriage, and propelling Sarah back into singlehood -- at the same time as her newly widowed father.

Thrown unwillingly into the suburban dating pool alongside her dad, Sarah is ambivalent about the whole process, despite her ticking clock and thoughts that she might enjoy a child of her own. But Sarah's large, loving Irish clan comes to her rescue -- her married sister placing a personal ad in her name and regularly monitoring Sarah's dating progress; and her brother, Michael, helps her feel lovable when he seeks out her comfort and advice while riding out his own rocky marriage.

In Must Love Dogs, Claire Cook ably captures the pitfalls of the midlife singles' scene, with a generous dose of humor and a heaping portion of characters who know better than to take themselves too seriously. (Summer 2002 Selection)

From the Publisher

The ACCLAIMED National Bestseller

A"funny and pitch-perfect" (Chicago Tribune) tale of thirty-something love. First time in trade paperback.

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.

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, FL Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Product Details

• Interviews & Essays
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Interviews & Essays

After my first novel was published, I was pretty sure no one in the whole town would ever speak to me again. People have always told me their stories, you see, and these stories kind of merged with the story I was making up and I figured nobody's novel ever really sells anyway, so why not take advantage of some good, organic material, and besides, I'd changed the lawsuit-worthy details and hadn't used anyone's real name.

So when the book came out, I walked my dog at 2 a.m. (and yes, the dog would eventually become material, too, but fortunately she is not a literate dog), drove a couple of hundred miles to go grocery shopping, that sort of thing. No real paranoia, but close attention to the realty sections of newspapers from other time zones. And I wrote. I dug into that second novel, which became Must Love Dogs after a line in a personal ad. I knew it would have to be good, real good, because when the school where I taught fired me for the material I excavated there, I'd need a career.

And then one day I did it. I shopped at the local supermarket. It was 7 a.m., which was early for grocery shopping, but not early enough. I handed my plastic card to the cashier. "Are you Claire Cook?" she asked as she scanned it.

"Why?" I whispered.

"I read your book," she practically yelled.

"Thank you," I whispered.

She scanned my bottle of Liquid Plumber and let it go. I watched it take out my pint of raspberries. "Are you writing another book?" she asked, even louder if that was possible.

"Yes," I admitted softly.

"What's it about?" she asked before she sent the romaine after the Liquid Plumber.

I'm really bad at that question. I can only answer it about books I didn't write. "Well," I attempted because she was handling my groceries and therefore had all the power. "It's about a man in his 60s who's dating through the personal ads."

"What's he look like?" she asked.

"Well, he's got thick white hair and shiny brown eyes and he drives a black Mazda Miata. And he's a widower and he's dating at least two women and embarrassing all of his adult children. One of them is the heroine, who's a preschool teacher and recently divorced and her family finally talks her into going on her first date in almost a decade...."

The cashier leaned over the conveyor belt that separated us. "The man..." she whispered.

"Yes?" I whispered back.

She looked over her shoulder, then into my eyes. "I think," she said, "I dated him."

Until that moment I thought I had made him up. Still, I listened to her date details and nodded while my frozen yogurt melted, even jotted down some more material in my notebook when I got out to the car.

Just as I was turning the key in the ignition, there was a knock on the hood of my car. "Claire?" an old friend yelled as I rolled down the window.

"Hi," I whispered. "How've you been?"

"Tell me the truth, the wild friend in your novel. That's me, right?"

"Well..." I whispered.

"It's okay," she said. "Really. And wait till you hear this..."

I've started going out again in broad daylight. And wherever I go, the wonderful people of Scituate, Massachusetts, hand me their stories, their dirt, their dish, on a silver platter. I can hardly wait to find out who else has dated one of my characters. (Claire Cook)

Read a Sample Chapter

I decided to listen to my family and get back out there. "There's life after divorce, Sarah," my father proclaimed, not that he'd ever been divorced.

"The longer you wait, the harder it'll be" was my sister Carol's little gem, as if she had some way of knowing whether or not that was true.

After months of ignoring them, responding to a personal ad in the newspaper seemed the most detached way to give in. I wouldn't have to sit in a restaurant with a friend of a friend of one of my brothers, probably Michael's, but maybe Johnny's or Billy Jr.'s, pretending to enjoy a meal I was too nervous to taste. I needn't endure even a phone conversation with someone my sister Christine had talked into calling me. My prospect and I would quietly connect on paper or we wouldn't.

HONEST, HOPELESSLY ROMANTIC old-fashioned gentleman seeks lady friend who enjoys elegant dining, dancing and the slow bloom of affection. WM, n/s, young 50's, widower, loves dogs, children and long meandering bicycle rides.

The ad jumped out at me the first time I looked. There wasn't much competition. Rather than risk a geographic jump to one of the Boston newspapers, I'd decided it was safer and less of an effort to confine my search to the single page of classifieds in the local weekly. Seven towns halfway between Boston and Cape Cod were clumped together in one edition. Four columns of "Women Seeking Men." A quarter of a column of "Men Seeking Women," two entries of "Women Seeking Women," and what was left of that column was "Men Seeking Men."

I certainly had no intention of adding to the disheartening surplus of heterosexual women placing ads, so I turned my attention to the second category. It was comprised of more than its share of control freaks, like this guy-Seeking attractive woman between 5'4" and 5'6", 120-135 lbs., soft-spoken, no bad habits, financially secure, for possible relationship. I could picture this dreamboat making his potential relationships step on the scale and show their bank statements before he penciled them in for a look-see.

And then this one. Quaint, charming, almost familiar somehow. When I got to the slow bloom of affection, it just did me in. Made me remember how lonely I was.

I circled the ad in red pen, then tore it out of the paper in a jagged rectangle. I carried it over to my computer and typed a response quickly, before I could change my mind:

Dear Sir:

You sound too good to be true, but perhaps we could have a cup of coffee together anyway-at a public place. I am a WF, divorced, young 40, who loves dogs and children, but doesn't happen to have either.

-Cautiously Optimistic

I mailed my letter to a Box 308P at the County Connections offices, which would, in turn, forward it. I enclosed a small check to secure my own box number for responses. Less than a week later I had my answer:

Dear Madam,

Might I have the privilege of buying you coffee at Morning Glories in Marshbury at 10 AM this coming Saturday? I'll be carrying a single yellow rose.

-Awaiting Your Response

The invitation was typed on thick ivory paper with an actual typewriter, the letters O and E forming solid dots of black ink, just like the old manual of my childhood. I wrote back simply, Time and place convenient. Looking forward to it.

I didn't mention my almost-date to anyone, barely even allowed myself to think about its possibilities. There was simply no sense in getting my hopes up, no need to position myself for a fall.

I woke up a few times Friday night, but it wasn't too bad. It's not as if I stayed up all night tossing and turning. And I tried on just a couple of different outfits on Saturday morning, finally settling on a yellow sweater and a long skirt with an old-fashioned floral print. I fluffed my hair, threw on some mascara and brushed my teeth a second time before heading out the door.

Morning Glories is just short of trendy, a delightfully overgrown hodgepodge of sun-streaked greenery, white lattice and round button tables with mismatched iron chairs. The coffee is strong and the baked goods homemade and delicious. You could sit at a table for hours without getting dirty looks from the people who work there. The long Saturday-morning take-out line backed up to the door, and it took me a minute to maneuver my way over to the tables. I scanned quickly, my senses on overload, trying to pick out the rose draped across the table, to remember the opening line I had rehearsed on the drive over.

"Sarah, my darlin' girl. What a lovely surprise. Come here and give your dear old daddy a hug."

"Dad? What are you doing here?"

"Well, that's a fine how-do-you-do. And from one of my very favorite daughters at that."

"Where'd you get the rose, Dad?"

"Picked it this morning from your dear mother's rose garden. God rest her soul."

"Uh, who's it for?"

"A lady friend, honey. It's the natural course of this life that your dad would have lady friends now, Sarry. I feel your sainted mother whispering her approval to me every day."

"So, um, you're planning to meet this lady friend here, Dad?"

"That I am, God willing."

Somewhere in the dusty corners of my brain, synapses were connecting. "Oh my God. Dad. I'm your date. I answered your personal ad. I answered my own father's personal ad." I mean, of all the personal ads in all the world I had to pick this one?

My father looked at me blankly, then lifted his shaggy white eyebrows in surprise. His eyes moved skyward as he cocked his head to one side. He turned his palms up in resignation. "Well, now, there's one for the supermarket papers. Honey, it's okay, no need to turn white like you've seen a ghost. Here. This only proves I brought you up to know the diamond from the riffraff."

Faking a quick recovery is a Hurlihy family tradition, so I squelched the image of a single yellow rose in a hand other than my father's. I took a slow breath, assessing the damage to my heart. "Not only that, Dad, but maybe you and I can do a Jerry Springer show together. How 'bout 'Fathers Who Date Daughters'? I mean, this is big, Dad, the Oedipal implications alone-"

"Oedipal, smedipal. Don't be getting all college on me now, Sarry girl." My father peered out from under his eyebrows. "And lovely as you are, you're even lovelier when you're a smidgen less flip."

I swallowed back the tears that seemed to be my only choice besides flip, and sat down in the chair across from my father. Our waitress came by and I managed to order a coffee. "Wait a minute. You're not a young fifty, Dad. You're sixty-six. And when was the last time you rode a bike? You don't own a bike. And you hate dogs."

"Honey, don't be so literal. Think of it as poetry, as who I am in the bottom of my soul. And, Sarah, I'm glad you've started dating again. Kevin was not on his best day good enough for you, sweetie."

"I answered my own father's personal ad. That's not dating. That's sick."

My father watched as a pretty waitress leaned across the table next to ours. His eyes stayed on her as he patted my hand and said, "You'll do better next time, honey. Just keep up the hard work." I watched as my father raked a clump of thick white hair away from his watery brown eyes. The guy could find a lesson in...Jesus, a date with his daughter.

"Oh, Dad, I forgot all about you. You got the wrong date, too. You must be lonely without Mom, huh?"

The waitress stood up, caught my father's eye and smiled. She walked away, and he turned his gaze back to me. "I think about her every day, all day. And will for the rest of my natural life. But don't worry about me. I have a four o'clock."

"What do you mean, a four o'clock? Four o'clock Mass?"

"No, darlin'. A wee glass of wine at four o'clock with another lovely lady. Who couldn't possibly hold a candle to you, my sweet."

I supposed that having a date with a close blood relative was far less traumatic if it was only one of the day's two dates. I debated whether to file that tidbit away for future reference, or to plunge into deep and immediate denial that the incident had ever happened. I lifted my coffee mug to my lips. My father smiled encouragingly.

Perhaps the lack of control was in my wrist. Maybe I merely forgot to swallow. But as my father reached across the table with a pile of paper napkins to mop the burning coffee from my chin, I thought it even more likely that I had simply never learned to be a grown-up.

—From Must Love Dogs by Claire Cook (c) July 2002, Viking Press, used by permission.