Merrill Markoe's Guide to Love - Softcover

Markoe, Merrill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0871137062 ISBN 13: 9780871137067

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998

Synopsis

When Merril Markoe looked back on her decidedly checkered romantic past, she decided, in the name of women everywhere, to set out on a quest for the holy grail of true love. The result is Merrill Markoe's Guide to Love, which goes boldly where no book has ever dared -- from a hands-on oral-sex class to a consultation with LaToya Jackson's psychic. Markoe discloses the "Secrets of Seduction" -- who knew that oven mitts can make intercourse more fun? -- and visits a "love channeler" who delivers advice from his alter-ego Shontee, who lives 250,000 years in the future. Having scaled a mountain of Hallmark poetry and "breast enhancers," Markoe has proven herself a guerrilla in the struggle for love. Coming in comic aid to women in distress everywhere, Merrill Markoe's Guide to Love is a brazen and brilliantly funny take on love and sex in the self-help world of the nineties.

About this title

Review

Merrill Markoe did the world a favor when she wrote her Guide to Love, providing insight on important issues such as "How to Turn a Man Into Putty in Your Hands" and under what conditions one wears horse hairs clipped to one's pubic curls. Covering pheromones to flirting, and with the inside dirt on a men's seduction course and a women's seminar on blow-jobs, Markoe exposes, as it were, the market that's sprung up to help the lovelorn.

From Kirkus Reviews

Markoe (How to Be Hap-Hap-Happy Like Me, 1994), a columnist and Emmy Awardwinning former writer for David Letterman, is like a sassy friend who's fun to spend time with--although maybe not too much time all at once. Being guided through the vicissitudes of love by a self-described ``hyper-ironic smartass'' is bound to be enlightening, and Markoe doesn't disappoint. From hysterical send- ups of the ``Hallmark poets'' to the finer points of canine attachment, Markoe's vision of love is unique and hilarious. The largest part of her search for understanding is taken up with doing the circuit of love-related seminars in her home state of California (where love and self-help are not so easily distinguished). In ``Secretz of Seduction,'' Markoe finds herself waist-deep in vibrating, squirting, anatomically correct love tools. In romance guru Dr. Pat Allen's seminar ``Getting to I Do,'' she must raise her right hand to affirm: ``I promise on my honor I will keep my mouth shut when I am trolling as a sexual person and wait until I am spoken to and then respond enthusiastically no matter how stupid the remark, so help me, God''--which is patently impossible for Markoe, who cannot let a stupid remark go unremarked. (Markoe ends up spending much of her seminar training time at hotel bars with friends, who accompany her on her quest.) Sometimes she goes it alone, as when she visits a love channeler, who puts his hand down her shirt and makes her a horsehair charm that she must wear in her ``Triangle of Venus'' to attract men. Markoe is more impressed with the fact that she is still alive after this adventure than she is with the charm's efficacy. A fun romp through the sillier side of love, best savored in small does. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0871137062
• ISBN 13: 9780871137067
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192