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Summary
Summary
Everyone's favorite QVC girlfriend follows her national bestseller It's Better to Laugh . . . with hilarious takes on how to have fun after 40. Filled with observations from the front lines on what it's like to be a mature single woman in the '90s, this book marks Kathy Levine as the heir apparent to Erma Bombeck.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this amusing commentary on middle-age single life in the 1990s, Levine (It's Better to Laugh, coauthored with Scovell), a 40-something host on the QVC home shopping channel, delivers her thoughts on a variety of topics, including dieting, plastic surgery and the dating game. Readers will particularly enjoy her hilarious account of a singles restaurant night attended by 20 "great" women and six extremely boring men. Despite several setbacks (such as a chemical face peel that became infected and a duplicitous lover who made off with her $1800 loan), Levine maintains her optimism and ability to laugh at herself. She also describes her success with a physician-prescribed weight-loss pill and offers sensible advice on nutrition. She drops her relentlessly upbeat tone only in an affecting chapter on the death of her ex-husband, Jay Levine, from whom she had been divorced for 10 years. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A lively, outspoken commentary on life as a middle-aged, divorced mini-celebrity who fights fat, the dearth of acceptable men, and mortality. Levine is a successful product-pusher on QVC (the network that pioneered shop-around-the-clock-from-your-couch), her viewers attracted by a straightforward approach to shopping and a ``Jewish-mamma-of-the-'90s'' presentation. The tone here is basically letters-to-my-new-best-friend, revealing all about her latest love affairs (successful and unsuccessful, serendipitous and planned, younger and older); her face-lift (yes, she had one, but it was small and unimportant, only an adjunct to a face peel, and QVC didn't order her to do it), her weight loss (with the help of the once-miraculous, now-controversial diet pill, ``fen- phen''). Now, the reader should understand that Levine doesn't really approve of anti-aging surgery or obsession with weight. But something (a wish for another decade in television?) made her do it. Levine's talent as storyteller and coauthor Scovell's skill as a writer give enough punch to the material to make the manifold ``oy vays'' and other ethnic exclamation points unnecessary. The death of Levine's ex-husband, who had remained a loving friend, gives a sober note to the otherwise energetic tale. But the last chapter, unfortunately, is a plug for QVC. The reader has to be a really big fan to have a clue about the people she lauds or to care about the dress that she wore ten years ago when she helped launch the station. It is to laugh, yes; but, oy vay, it is also to despair of women who give priority to members of the opposite sex as simply romantic objects, to perfect bodies, and to mindless, endless shopping. (b&w illustrations) (TV satellite tour)
Library Journal Review
The host of a popular cable TV shopping channel and author of the best-selling It's Better To Laugh... (Pocket, 1995) reflects on middle age. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.