Relationships and marriages fraught with flaws and imperfections are consistent hallmarks of the always thought-provoking work of Marian Thurm (Today Is Not Your Day). Her seventh novel, The Blackmailer's Guide to Love, is set in 1978. A trio of young, sophisticated, upwardly mobile New Yorkers are embarking on their lives in post-Nixon Manhattan. "Suburban-bred innocent," Ivy League alumna and literary writer wannabe Mel Fleischer, 25, lands an entry-level job at a prestigious Madison Avenue magazine. Her boss, Austin Bloch, is a middle-aged, esteemed editor who works with some of the finest writers. However, that doesn't make his moral character exemplary, and Mel is put in the precarious position of covering for and hiding Austin's dalliances from his wife.
This is all new to Mel, who has "no idea how to navigate a universe where husbands and wives betray each other or snort coke with straws off glass tables." She shares her experiences with Charlie, her caring and supportive husband, a Manhattan psychotherapist. He is faced with his own dilemma in counseling Julia Meyerson, a young, divorced Ph.D. student who, unable to secure a teaching position, cares for an aging and infirm childless couple. Around the same time that Mel has one of her short stories accepted for publication by the New Yorker, doctor-patient lines start to blur for Charlie and Julia. Each character, on the brink of personal change, faces a crossroads.
Clever plot developments abound, and exquisitely drawn characters have their perceptions radically changed. Thurm's literary authority is on full display in this deeply engrossing and dramatically juicy novel. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines