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Breaking up good to do >>The art of How to Dump a Guy by JULIET WATERS
It was that same hint of evil that kept Kate Fillion on the bestseller list a year ago with Lip Service: The Truth About Women's Darker Side in Love, Sex and Friendship, and it'll probably contribute to the popularity of this book. But my main criticism of Fillion's first book was that I found its "revelations" anecdotal and essentially useless. How to Dump a Guy, on the other hand, is one of the most useful books ever written. How To Dump a Guy is part manual, and part compendium of successful rejection strategies that women have learned over the years but have been too "nice" to publish up until now . But the rules and ethics of orchestrating a successful rejection are not particularly gender spe-cific. In fact, I could find only one line in this book that could only be used by women. It's one to use if you want to get your boyfriend to dump you for someone else: "A friend of mine just told me she gives blow jobs--isn't that disgusting?" Changing blow jobs to pussy will work almost as well. If it doesn't, try "Condoms? My mom used to tell me that the only reliable birth control is a good blow job. Oh, did I mention she wants to meet you?" There are people who are going to find this book a bit nasty. You may not agree with the ethics of getting one's dumpee to do a few household repairs before breaking up with him. But lighten up, this is satire. And nothing in this book encourages truly callous behaviour. Actually, the core argument of How to Dump is that a certain degree of cruelty is unavoidable in breaking any emotional attachment. Still, there is necessary and unnecessary cruelty. Ironically, most of the unnecessary cruelty results from people trying to escape the acts of necessary cruelty. These are the people who stop returning phone calls or leave their dumpees hanging, or degrade the dumpee with transparent, witless lies. But like the song says, "Cruel to be kind means that I love you." Which is why even the kindest people sometimes need a little shove from their inner sadist. How to Dump a Guy: A Coward's Manual by Kate Fillion and Ellen Ladowsky, Harper Perennial, pb, 179 pp., $14.99
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If you look closely at the cover of How to Dump a Guy: A Coward's Manual, you'll see a small icon underneath the title. It's a silhouette of a tiny woman dancing on a tiny coffin. Kate Fillion and Ellen Ladowsky claim in the opening of their book that it's time for women to get in touch with their inner coward. But let's face it, there's a subtext in this book that's specifically targeting their inner sadist.