I’m writing on Jenny Crusie’s books this week. I am reposting an old review of her first book, Manhunting:
This is not exactly a review, but celebration of one of my favorite books.
Manhunting, originally published in 1993, and reissued twice since, is Crusie’s first published book (she had published one novella). The clearest indicator of how much I love this book is the fact that I was able to overlook the hero’s mustache, which is in full and glorious display on the original cover:
Seriously, can you think of any sexy guys with mustaches? Not only is the mustache not sexy, but it has the power to de-sexify attractive men (as fans of Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Jude Law can attest). The mustache brings to mind such sexy beasts as Nietzsche, Stalin, Borat and the guy in My Name is Earl.
Actually, add a cowboy hat, and Earl is a good representation of Jake Templeton. For five years, Jake’s been the groundskeeper for “The Cabins”, the Kentucky golf resort he co-owns with his brother Will, who serves as manager (the heroine later calls the resort a “log cabin with a thyroid problem”). Jake was once a tax attorney married to Tiffany, a “brainy, efficient, calculating, manipulative, ambitious” woman. He traded the rat race and the marriage for the peace of The Cabins, and he’s been pretty content, but when we meet Jake, sitting out on the porch sipping coffee, looking at the sunrise, we discover that Jake has a “slight nagging feeling he might be missing something” which he immediately tries to tamp down and ignore.
At this point, we have already been introduced to Kate Svenson, age 35, who has a fabulous career in management consulting, great friends, and money, but she is lonely and longs for marriage and family. Her best friend Jessie helps her craft a plan to find a “distinguished” husband with whom she can “build an empire”, and the plan includes going where the blue chip men are: The Cabins, or as her best friend Jessie calls it, “Outward bound with martinis”. I loved Kate. She’s smart, confident and funny as hell:
[T]here seemed to be at least a thousand people milling around. If she went skinny-dipping in the morning, she’d probably turn up in vacation slides all over the Midwest— “And here’s a shot of that crazy woman who used to go swimming buck naked every morning. Notice how her breasts are startin’ to droop?”
Within the first few pages, we have several Crusie trademarks:
Later, other trademark Crusie tropes emerge:
I’m not in love with Jake.” Kate took a deep breath. “And he’s not in love with me.”
“Hold that thought, honey.” Nancy grinned at her. “It’s not going to do you a bit of good, but it will steady you for a while.”
Jake and Kate are both unsatisfied with their lives, but Jake has a “niggle” and Kate has a “plan”. Kate loves her career, while Jake is content to tend the golf course and fish all day. This difference in their temperaments creates the main conflict they will face on their road to love. Of course, they change each others’ minds in the best kind of character trajectory, the trajectory fueled by love: By falling in love, Kate recognizes that marrying a male version of her hard-charging self is not the key to happiness, and Jake stops tarring all women with the same brush; Kate learns to stop and smell the roses, and Jake faces that fact that there’s a difference between being centered and stagnating; Kate comes to redefine success on her own terms rather than others’ materialistic benchmarks, while Jake realizes that using his financial skills doesn’t require selling out.
The book is so structured by mirrors and parallels, even I can see its geometric bones. Kate has a disastrous date with a fellow guest (Jake observes, “Dating you is like dating death”), then she fishes peacefully with Jake in a boat on a lake, then she has a bad date, then she boats with Jake. Kate thinks Jake is annoying, Jake thinks Kate is annoying. Kate begins to think of Jake as a brother. Jake beings to think of Kate as a sister. Kate starts realize Jake is hot. Jake begins to view Kate as hot. And so on.
Kate and Jake’s relationship is mirrored by Will’s relationship with The Cabins’ social director, Valerie, which is not a actually secondary romance but a foil. Will and Valerie have been living together for years. Will thinks, selfishly, they are just shagging and Valerie, selfishly, wants to marry him for her career. Non-committal Will and ultra-calculating Valerie both treat each other as instruments, and they exemplify the dangers to Kate and Jake of allowing certain tendencies to flourish unchecked.
I read this after I had read several other Crusie books, including Bet Me and Welcome to Temptation, which are widely considered to be her best romances. I felt like I could see the seeds of those later, more complex books in Manhunting (although, if Wikipedia is to be believed, Crusie had written at least a first draft of Bet Me before Manhunting). A sophisticated literary critic might place greater value on those other, more complex books, with more issues, more characters, more plots and subplots, and more nuanced obstacles to love, but for me, Manhunting is like Crusie Straight Up: it has all the things I love about this author, without extras. It just zips along: a fun, funny, sexy read, not trying to be anything more than a story of two people who are perfect for each other and are the last to know.
I don’t think this is a flawless book, if there is such a thing. For example, the connections drawn between career and character are just too broad [in RL, sometimes it's the small town shopkeepers who are the greedy assholes, and the captains of industry who practice lovingkindness], and I have to squirm my way through a scene where Jake schools Kate on the true meaning of feminism [In fact, Crusie's take on feminism is very present in many of her early books. I may write on that separately.]. But my love for this book is boundless nonetheless.
I love this book for the humor, but also for the sexual tension. If there’s a better example of how to do sexual tension, I haven’t read it. Kate and Jake don’t even kiss until past the halfway point [something typical of Crusie's early books], but that doesn’t stop this from being one very sexy book. One of my favorite moments in the book is when Jake finds Kate skinny dipping, teases her, and she has the last laugh by striding out of the lake like a goddess, leaving him stunned. But the absolute best is when Jake realizes, in the middle of a game of pool, that he wants Kate, immediately and desperately. He keeps miscuing as images of Kate over the past few days flash though his mind. He finds her in the supply room, where she is simultaneously dealing with her own realization (see, that thing about mirroring).
“Ben just beat me at pool.” He stood in front of her with his hands on his hips.
“Good grief,” Kate said. “What did you do? Fall on your cue?”
“I got distracted.”
Jake leaned against the shelves, a hand on each side of her, and looked in to her eyes. She suddenly had trouble swallowing.
“We seem to have been a little slow here, darlin’,” he said, and bent down to kiss her softly. Time stopped, and Kate felt his lips distinctly on hers, not as a blurred impact, but as Jake’s lips touching hers. This is Jake, she thought. Jake, Oh, my God.
This is a deeply romantic book, tightly focused on one central message: we don’t love people because they instantiate a list of desirable qualities. We don’t get to choose whom to love, not really. We love someone because of some inexplicable combustion, emotional, sexual, and otherwise, that our connection generates. [This, again, is typical of Crusie.] Both Jake and Kate sought to retain control at the expense of experiencing love, but they drew each other out of comfort and into risk. It’s the delight of a good romance that the reader gets to experience the joy of risk rewarded, and I experience that every time I pick up this terrific little book.
