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Five Men Who Broke My Heart : A Memoir

Five Men Who Broke My Heart : A Memoir

List Price: $21.95
Your Price: $14.93
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Fizzles after a promising start
Review: Although this starts out with energy and some wit, it soon bogs down in whiny repetitive details. Shapiro seems to find her self-destructive patterns endlessly fascinating, leaving the reader longing for the story to become something other than a vanity project. It soon becomes clear why she usually writes shorter pieces...here she lacks the intellectual stamina or real emotional insight to get to the heart of who she is -- and why we should care. Most appalling was how she bought into her husband's "no kids" mantra in the end. This is clearly meant to be a huge defining self-realization, but essentially boils down to:"Oh, yeah, I guess I really do like to be the center of attention and I do love my work..so ok, fine honey, no kids." (Huh? as though millions of women don't manage to have kids and work successfully. Which century is she in?). To have children or not is (happily) a personal choice, and who really cares anyway but the principals. But that moment of decision(central to the book)is usually a good time to take a really honest look at who you are -- and who you're with. Here it feels as though Shapiro's too frightened to really put her marriage to serious scrutiny. She cheats her readers -- and perhaps herself.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: raw, racy, and irresistible
Review: This honest, powerful, poignant, laugh-out-loud hysterical book is an absolute must-have. Susan Shapiro's tell-all Five Men Who Broke My Heart will leave you feeling sassier, sexier, and more independent. She boldly asks-and courageously finds the answers to-the always lingering 'what if?'question as she tracks down five of her exes. The book is raw, racy, and irresistible. There is one thing you should be warned of ahead of time, though: Don't be surprised if you have to guard this book with your life. So do yourself a favor and get a few copies like I did-one for you, one for your best friend and one for your significant other (if you have one)-because this book has been known to walk away. And if you don't, you might just find yourself tracking it down.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One Book That Healed My Heart
Review: Susan Shapiro's memoir, "5 Men Who Broke My Heart" is a great antidote for boyfriend agony, a tonic of empathy for anyone who knows bad or broken relationships. With wit, wisdom and a lot of humor - a zinger on every page! - Shapiro's chronicle reminds each reader (while keeping her in stitches) to maintain the faith that every wrong place/wrong time guy is prologue to the right one; and though it took her 5 men and 20 years of dating to find him, he is well worth the wait. Thank you, Ms. Shapiro, for the lesson and the laughs.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hilarious
Review: Five Men Who Broke My Heart is one of the funniest books I've read in years.

It is a brutally honest, sarcastic, revealing look at past relationships and how they shape our future ones. Anyone that has ever had a failed relationship will find something recognizable and people that found true love on the first try will see how lucky they really are.

In addition to a copious amount of humor reminiscent of Annie Hall or Play it Again Sam, Five Men Who Broke My Heart is really a love story which proves that even failed relationships can lead to something worthwhile.

Anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And apparently funnier too.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: PLATYPUS
Review: THE AUTHOR SEEMS A TAD NARCISISTIC, BUT THEN THE MEMOIR IS INDEED ABOUT HER!
WHAT DOES A SPLATTERED PLATYPUS LOOK LIKE???
THE CONCLUSION THAT SUSAN COMES TO ABOUT HER LOVES AND LIFE IS HEARTENING AND VALIDATES THE MEMOIR.
I DID ENJOY THE MEMORIES OF ANN ARBOR. GO BLUE!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Man Who Loves This Book!
Review: I got a lot of sex off this book. That's part of it. It really turned my girl on. But then I started reading it, waiting for her to come back from class. It's hilarious. Really rocking funny. I told my best bud to buy it for his girlfriend for V-Day. He had to buy a second copy because he started reading it, couldn't put it down, and got pizza all over it. So he's another guy who got into it. I thought I hated chick books. Don't get me wrong, I still do, except this one's different. Because it's FUNNY. That's all. PS The author is a babe.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Take the boy, make him a girl...
Review: Am I the only one who noticed this book essentially steals the premise of High Fidelity and rehashes the same story with the (marginal) difference of reversing the gender of the narrator?

And this is the kind of book that gets reviewed in USA Today (who failed to note this similarity)? It seems disingenuous not to spotlight the fact that this book is largely an imitation (not that High Fidelity is completely original in itself, but at least Hornby took the time to title his book, or shouldn't Lolita really have been titled: The Girl Who Ran Away With Me)---but then again, how much blame can really rest on Shapiro's shoulders for this literary affectation? It's no surprise really. After all, if her book is selling copies it can't be Finnegans Wake.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: save your moola...step away from this book!
Review: Ok, in theory this sounds like a great premise for a book. However, I didn't take into consideration the personality of the author which makes so much of this book excrutiating to read. Not only neurotic, she is whiney and competitive and extremely passive-aggressive-so much so that I wonder how her former beaus could stand her as long as they did!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The Author Broke My Heart . . .
Review: ... when, two-thirds of the way through the book, she switched from writing about old boyfriends to writing about her father, brothers, and the man she did end up marrying -- including detailed descriptions of her wedding day(s). I felt duped ... the segue seemed self-indulgent and completely off-topic. In the end, rather than a memoir examining important romantic relationships for fun and personal insight, "Five Men Who Broke My Heart" is the story of finding enough marginally related material to weave into a publishable-length book.

Written by an author whose credits range from the best newspapers to fun women's magazines, I looked forward to an insightful and chatty narrative. The book is chatty. It is not insightful. The author examines only the surface and sexual -- not the emotional -- aspects of five love affairs that did not endure. I got the sense that she judges her relationships "failed" because she buys into society's idea that dating's sole goal is marriage rather than experiences of connection and growth. She never seems to sense the universality of her experiences, never looks up from her monologue to acknowledge the readers who are eager to learn, eager to play along with their own histories. And she loses credibility when she claims to want a baby -- yet doesn't devote a word to showing it ... where is her longing, her happy daydreams of children, her grief about not having them? Instead, as with marriage, I suspect that she sees motherhood as mostly "expected," conferring societal (familial) approval. And that external validation rings hollow for me in the context of a memoir, where I expect to find emotion, insight and a truth to self. Just a little of that would have richly expanded the material and kept the premise true to its title.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: very funny & lots of charm
Review: What a great premise -- who wouldn't want to track down her old boyfriends and find out "what went wrong"? Or better yet, do it vicariously, through the buoyant and unembarrassable author. It makes for a funny and bittersweet story, and the book has a deeper message -- you don't get something without sacrifices along the way, and the man she married was the right one all along.


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