Another Review at MyShelf.Com

Publisher: St. Martins Griffin
Release Date: Sept. 2004
ISBN: 0312323689
Awards:  
Format Reviewed: Paperback
Buy it at Amazon
Read an Excerpt
Genre:   Contemporary / humor
Reviewed: 2004
Reviewer: Janet Elaine Smith
Reviewer Notes:  
Janet Elaine Smith is a well-known magazine writer for 12 magazines (both print and ezines), the author of 12 published novels, one non-fiction book and has gained a growing audience for her marketing expertise.
Copyright MyShelf.com

Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour  
By John Blumenthal

    I went into this book, Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour, fully expecting it to be a historical novel about one of my ancestors. Was I in for a surprise! There is nothing historical about this book, but hysterical, well, it was definitely that. Even an old sobersides would have to break out into an occasional hee-haw while reading about the misadventures of Plato G. Fussell.

    Plato (who was called not-so-affectionately “Fussell”) by most of his acquaintances. I can’t say he honestly had any friends, other than perhaps his one contact who helped him gain information on his long-time hero, Millard Fillmore. The closest thing he had to a friend other than that was Dr. Wang, his psychiatrist, who was nearly as crazy as Plato himself.

    We first get an insight into Plato as a child, when all the kids in kindergarten teased him and called him “Play-Doh.” It was there that he met and fell in love with Daisy Crane. His parents are quite another issue. His mother is a hypochondriac, but it is his father who ends up in the hospital, and eventually dead. Plato is not at all prepared for the shock he gets at the reading of his father’s will when he discovers that the father he thought he knew was a complete stranger to him. This leads his mother to seek a “new life of her own,” which sends Plato into near convulsions.

    Plato is a delight, who often speaks in spoonerisms and at other times he says words in complete reverse, announcing that he is Otalp Llessuf. His obsessions bring him in contact with a woman, Emily Thorndyke, who is as weird as Plato. It is not long, however, until he discovers that Emily has a secret of her own, which he confesses to Dr. Wang, and soon a triangle has formed that seems doomed to destroy all of them.

    As the book winds down, the twists and turns are easily equal to those on any hairpin road through the Rocky Mountains. This book will have you in stitches from start to finish. Highly recommended!