(Scroll down to read an excerpt and find book club questions.)
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See pictures from the Must Love Dogs movie.
“Funny and pitch-perfect.”—The Chicago Tribune
“If Must Love Dogs is any indication of her talents, readers will hope that Claire Cook will be telling breezy summer stories from the South Shore of Massachusetts for seasons to come.”—The Washington Post
“A hoot.”—The Boston Globe
“A hilariously original tale about dating and its place in a modern woman’s life.”—BookPage
“Claire Cook’s Must Love Dogs, a book that’s got more giggles than soda bread has raisins.”—Hartford Courant
“This utterly charming second novel by Cook is a fun read, perfect for whiling away an afternoon on the beach.” —Library Journal
“Voluptuous, sensuous, alluring and fun. Barely 40 DWF seeks special man to share starlit nights. Must love dogs.”
Life after divorce for Sarah Hurlihy consists of juggling her job as a preschool teacher and the demands of her interfering family. Then her bossy big sister decides to place a personal ad for her, and the wild ride begins.
Sarah is about to meet her first date in more than a decade. She is scanning her neighborhood café for the man with a yellow rose. And find him she does, but he’s the last person on the planet she expects to see . . . .
Claire Cook gives us a contemporary Everywoman in a big, rollicking south-of-Boston Irish family. Hilarious missteps abound. Sarah’s widowed father, Billy Hurlihy, with six adult kids, is seeing at least two women—that they know of. And he and Sarah aren’t the only Hurlihys with romantic challenges. Her brother, Michael, for one, has a rocky marriage that Mother Teresa, his Saint Bernard, just may put over the edge.
With self-deprecating humor and a laugh-out-loud look at the way we life now, including shar-pei/Labrador crosses and a transgenerational body-piercing experience, Must Love Dogs, is a hilarious, heartwarming novel for women who’ve been there—a wry, funny, clever romp about dating and riotous family life.
Excerpted from Must Love Dogs
Copyright © Claire Cook. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
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 50s, 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.
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Book Club Conversation Starters
1. What scene in Must Love Dogs made you laugh the hardest?
2. What gave you the biggest jolt of recognition?
3. In Must Love Dogs, personal ads are place in a newspaper on actual paper, and a voicemail box is accessed via a telephone in order to listen to messages from recipients. Does this add to the charm of the novel? How has the Internet revolutionized dating through personal ads? Do you think it’s a good thing or a bad thing?
4. Do you think the Must Love Dogs movie captures the spirit of the book? Why and/or why not? Which scenes from the book do you wish the movie had included?
5. What was your favorite “recipe” in the novel? Did you try it?
6. How would Must Love Dogs change if it were written from Carol’s point of view? From Dolly’s? From John Anderson’s? Is there another character who might have narrated as effectively as Sarah?
7. Which traits of the Hurlihy family are shared by all familites, and which are unique to them? Does your own family have a quirky little something that might have fit right in with the story? One that would top it?
8. Have you or any of your friends ever dated through the personals/online? Would you be more or less likely to after reading Must Love Dogs?
9. In the book, Sarah asks John Anderson, “What makes you think something’s wrong with you?” Do you agree that people who are single often begin to think that something is wrong with them? Is there a version of this that applies to couples?
10. What are some of the ways in which people or society in general makes single people feel like second-class citizens? How has that changed for women, and men, over the years?
11. Some readers find Sarah’s father, Billy Hurlihy, both lovable and exasperating. Based on what we know of his marriage to Sarah’s mother, and his current love life, what do you think of him, especially as a husband and father? Is he likely to remarry?
12. As a preschool teacher, Sarah spends her days surrounded by children. As a member of a large, close-knit family, she is often in the company of her nieces and nephews. Do you think this makes it harder or easier for her to come to terms with the fact that she might not have her own children?
13. Would you want your child to be in Sarah Hurlihy’s classroom at Bayberry Preschool? Why or why not?
14. Claire Cook always wanted to be a novelist, yet didn’t go after her dream until she was in her forties. Was she wise to wait until she’d had more life experience, or she have had the courage to pursue her dream earlier? Do you think either path would have led her to the same place? What does that inspire you to achieve in your own life?
More Praise for Must Love Dogs
“Must Love Dogs has already been a major motion picture, and now New York Times bestselling author Claire Cook’s hilarious and heartwarming series is begging to hit the screen again.”—New York Journal of Books
“Claire Cook’s characters aren’t rich or glamorous—they’re physically imperfect, emotionally insecure, and deeply familiar. Must Love Dogs is a sweet, funny novel about first dates and second chances.”—Tom Perrotta
“Funny and quirky and honest.”—Jane Heller
“Must Love Dogs is a must read.”—Caroline Preston
“Reading Must Love Dogs is like having lunch with your best friend—fun, breezy, and full of laughs.”—Lorna Landvik
“This story is so delicious, so funny, so warm, that one engages on the first page and still wants more on the last. A truly joyful read.”—Jeanne Ray
“Whether you are a long-time fan or a new reader, jump right in to Claire Cook’s newest Must Love Dogs adventure. Your spirits will be lifted, and you’ll be charmed by the witty repartee, the twinkle in the author’s eye, a beautifully structured plot, and a wonderfully resilient main character to cheer for.”—Examiner