P.S.

by Helen Schulman

What do you do when the fantasy of reuniting with your first love comes true? Especially when he died in a car crash twenty years earlier...

Louise Harrington pines for her youth as she looks out her office window at the quad. Her ten-year marriage ended four years ago, for reasons she has yet to fathom. At thirty-eight she is as confused about the men in her life as she ever was at seventeen. So when the double of her high school sweetheart appears in her life, she can not tell if she has gone mad, if this is a joke or some kind of miracle. When her best friend Missy gets involved (it has taken Louise years to forgive her for stealing him the first time) history begins to repeat itself as Louise tries to make sense of the crazy and mysterious turn her life has taken.

P.S. is a beautifully written, witty, and profound examination of desire, at once deeply affecting and knowingly humorous about affairs of the heart. Schulman has written a love story, a mystery, a nostalgic romp for anyone who's ever been in and out of love.

Genres: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Novels

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 18, 2001

Reviews

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just looked at the reviews of this book and can't believe all the negative ones. This novel was delightful. It engendered warm feelings in me that have not faded even more than 15 years (!) after I read it. Check out the New York Times review and avoid the movie, at least until after you've read the book.

[Sarah Blachman · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was an easy but annoying read. I spend 3 hours a day commuting to work and home, so I have plenty of time to read. My dear sweet roommate bought me this on the guise that this was a really good award winning novel. At least she tried.

This book was horrid! The idea of a dead boyfriend coming back, or a second chance at love is a really neat and could be well thought out idea. But this was just lacking EVERYTHING that neat and well thought out was.

The lead character, Louise, is a vapid self absorbed late thirty something, that needs a life transplant. Generally when the character is so annoying at the beginning they go through some kind of challenging arc to make them better and more complete at the end. WRITING 101. She never changes, and her friends are completely deranged and patheticly horrible. Who would want a best friend like Missy. She's a bonafide starts with a C ends with a T.

The B line story of Louise and her ex husband is contrived and not very well developed.

I found this book very disapointing. And will probably never read anything by Ms. Schulman again, especially if it's dialouge is as innane as this.


I never have THIS strong of an opinion on books I read to commute with but, man this was terrible.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was marked as a best book of 2006 by the library system. I have NO idea why. It was quite possibly one of the dumbest stories I've ever read. Maybe I'm not old enough to get it.....although the main character was 30 so maybe not. In this book, Louis fell in love with a boy in high school but he dumped her for her best friend and then he died in a car accident. She tried to move on - even got married (and divorced) - but no one compared. Then, when she's perusing applications for graduate school where she's the admission counselor she comes across the name of her long dead boyfriend. She sets up a mock interview, sees him, and convinces herself that HE is the long dead boyfriend reincarnated...or something like that. They become lovers, her best friend (the one the original boyfriend dumped her for) tried to get this one, confusion ensues...but the end up together. I just don't know why I kept reading.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

The low ratings surprised me but yet I wanted to give this book a chance before of several reasons. For one, I personally never cared about the majority opinion, in fact most books that people praise,I detest,vice versa. Secondly, I like to give every book a chance, there are some rare books that surprise me as I read the story. Lastly, I watched the movie a couple of years ago, it was okay but not all that interesting. I felt that the plot was rushed, nothing really that exciting. As far as the story, let's just say that the writing style was horrid! If the writing style sucks, then the chances of me enjoying a book are very slim. I felt like I was reading a screenplay, every word lined up together without any paragraphs in between.

NO NO AND NO! EPIC FAIL!

[Hweeps · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book sucked . There seems to be no better way to put it. I was so taken by the premise of the book at first, reading the blurb. Woahhh, a second chance at a first love... Everything seemed so amazing, it's like it spoke to me. I mean, how many people have wondered about their first love, their first crush, and wished they would do something differently had they the chance again?

The person who wrote the blurb should be applauded. The writer.. should not. I don't even know how to start describing how bad the book was. It lacked dimensions (Louise was just an old spindle pining for a lost love who died tragically in a car crash years ago. But she's still a somewhat attractive spindle, with an unclear relationship with her ex-husband, and an even more unclear relationship with her mum, and a bad one with her own brother (and I don't believe there was an actual reason given for that). And Missy, her dear old best friend who oh, also happens to be the girl who jumped on her first love right after he broke out with her, is a self-serving bitch who doesn't actually care about Louise but seems to have spent decades with her just girl-talking), it lacked some sort of plot, it lacked action, it lacked rationality (and I'm not saying that because of how crazy it is that Scott whateverhislastnameis came back. I'm talking about how.. just.. the whole book lacked rationality and reason.

Everything seemed so unclear, and so..mismatched! I really don't know how do I even start to say how bad it was.

Worst thing is I actually paid for the book. Thank God I bought it at a sale - it cost.. I don't know, $1? $2? Even if it were $1, it was $1 too expensive. I should never have bought it, never should have even read it. God knows how many years I've taken off my life just reading that. I started that in May, late May, and finished that in early June. I can't seem to think of any part I enjoyed.

The ending was abrupt, and F. Scott's ambiguous nature and motivations definitely didn't help. Are we supposed to think that he really likes this woman years older than him (who also happens to be the person in charge of his admissions into college or something), because she understands him like no one does? I'm not against relationships where the woman is years older than the man, nor am I against understanding. It's just, you can't just throw out some keywords here and there and expect it to be like, there-you have your answer. The whole meaning of life for my characters in my miserable 'book'.

I thought the relationship between Louise and her best friend, Missy (short for Melissa apparently) was kinda interesting, how they seemed to always try to one-up the other in a hostile manner, especially when it came to boys. What I didn't understand was why Louise beared with Missy for so long, especially when what she did was so unforgivable that Louise kept thinking about it, not sparing the readers at all.

What was the main point of the book - the boy's appearance in her life; it had such promise! But it was ruined. Reduced. Reduced to a wild night of sex, some homecooked food in the morning for dear Louise, the air conditioning switched on full blast so she could come home to a nicely cool place, and basically things that spoke NOTHING about how far their relationship went, and how far it would go.

This review may be harsh, but I think it is partly because of how it could have been so good, so well-done but it wasn't. *sigh*
How did it even make it to the theaters though? But after thinking it though, I decided it was probably a book suited for the movies. I mean, second chance at love and all? Hell, even an ex with a sex disorder! It was the sort of book which would probably look nice on the silver screen... and had the promise to be good on the printed page.. but it wasn't.

I've not watched the movie though.

I really don't get how people found the book good.. There was only questions and no answers, and a whole lot of rubbish in between. Bleh.

Doubt I'd be watching the movie anytime soon.

[Kris (My Novelesque Life) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 STARS

"What would you do for a second chance at your first love? At thirty-eight, Louise Harrington still hasn't forgotten Scott Feinstadt, the boy who broke her eighteen-year-old heart and then died tragically in a car crash. Two decades later when his twenty-four-year-old doppelganger, the gorgeously boyish F. Scott Feinstadt, walks into her life, Louise might not know what to think, but this time around, at least she knows what she's doing. Scott still has the power to knock her off her feet, and her jealous best friend, self-involved ex-husband, and neurotic mother aren't helping matters, but Louise isn't about to make the same mistakes twice." (From Amazon)

An okay novel...it's been done before and nothing really makes this one stand out.

[Lynne Adams · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm spending some time in a foreign country where English books are hard to come by or I would not have finished this book. Like many other who read the book, I picked it up and brought it halfway across the globe with me because it was a NYT Notable book and the cover included many lauds. Why did it suck? In the words of one of the main characters speaking to the main character: "It isn't funny that you're in your late thirties and you're still mourning some dead punk who treated you like shit. . . . It isn't funny that you can't get over some stupid pivotal moment from high school. . . ." At that point, it sort of felt like the author was laughing at everyone who had gotten that far in the book, saying, "The joke's on you!" Indeed.

[Sammi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book got a bad rap. It isn't the best book I have ever read but it certainly wasn't as terrible as people make it out to be. It is a quick read with an annoying ending. It is meant to be a story, just a story about a middle aged woman and some interesting coincidence that happens to her. I enjoyed the story. The ending however felt abrupt and unfinished leaving you wondering! Overall quick read with an interesting story.

[Ayelet Waldman]

This is a nice novel, and I liked it very much, but I saw the movie first, and the movie is exactly, precisely faithful. So it was a little bizarre to read the book. I'm not going to make that mistake again. Book first. Movie after.

[happyd · Rating 1 out of 5]

predictable plot with annoying characters.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

An annoying woman thinks a bordering-on-psychotic young man is the reincarnation of her dead high school boyfriend? WTF?

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

I dug Helen Schulman's beautiful prose more than the strange and, for me at least, somewhat disappointing storyline.

[bob walenski · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a "chick flick" disguised as a book. Helen Schulman writes terrific dialog that's clever and quick. It adds an element of realism to her characters, which she works hard to try and develop. But just like a "Seinfeld Episode" this book is ultimately about nothing. Well maybe I should call it a fictional character's love life and thoughts about friendship and sex. All well and good, but when it's all over, it's all very forgettable.

Schulman cleverly introduces lots of complications and quick switches, trying to add to the drama, and these characters are all about drama. Toward the end i thought i was reading an old Doris Day / Rock Hudson film script...the same types of characters popping in and out, mistaken identities, lots of phone calls, confusion and more confusion, phone calls from your mother, jet set travel and over the top hyperbole.

I won't waste a long review of a dumb book. There are some things you might like if you want an easy read, ripe with fluff and insipid emotions. Perhaps I'm being unkind, but the very best thing about this novel was it was short.

[boat_tiger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book surprised me. While not life altering or even requiring the use of many brain cells it was a quick, easy entertaining read and I like a bit of fluff every now and again.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

"When Louise was seventeen her best friend, Missy, stole her first love, Scott Feinstadt, away from her. Then tragedy strikes when Scott dies in a car accident on the way to art school. Missy is left as the ""widower"" girlfriend while Louise is bitter and still very much in love with Scott. Louise's life goes on. The book picks up with Louise as an adult and divorcee. She is now the Admissions Coordinator for Columbia's Art Department and finds herself looking at a file belonging to an ""F. Scott Feinstadt"". The name alone brings back memories and feelings she hadn't felt in years. Then, going through his file, she finds that there are several more similarities between her Scott and this F. Scott. She sets up a meeting with the applicant and he turns out to look like an exact copy of her dead ex-boyfriend. She thinks that she is either going crazy or that she is being given a second chance, or both, but unlike Scott, she decides to handle F. Scott differently and take charge or whatever may develop.

The initial story pulls you in. You want to know who is F. Scott Feinstadt. You'll find yourself sucked into Louise's obsession of trying to separate the two. I don't understand Louise's obsession with the dead Scott Feinstadt because it seemed like he treated her like crap. But, I guess you have to understand the naivety of teenage love. Then, there's her best friend Missy, who, I don't even know why Louise is friends with her at all. Anyways, it was an okay book with a so-so ending."

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is a bit convoluted, and for that i apologize. The novel itself was so-so. I was a quick read, but I didn't find the characters particularly interesting. I KNEW the characters and could understand the basis of all their intertwined relationships (isn't that what the book is actually about? What shapes our relationships and how they shape us?) but I didn't really LIKE them. I understood their actions and why they did what they did. But I just didn't....like them. Didn't like their choices, didn't like the results.

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm rather fond of second chances in love, but color me jaded...I don't believe in them anymore. Well, the idea of entertaining and encouraging hope seems kind of misleading.

I didn't care too much for the story or the characters; in fact, I don't feel like the protagonist really grew or learned much at the end. Mainly I just liked the premise. I can see how someone much older than me might like the premise, too.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, I was really not into this story. It was hard to know whether to accept it as allegory, or to buy some supernatural aspect. That debate turned out to be an unnecessary distraction. The novel has been surprising in the way that it has made me think about love as a loved one ages and grows... it postulates that love shouldn't want a loved one to stay young forever, but to eventually grow old.

[Marsha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is so wistful, powerful and gripping in its longing for lost love. It is the sort of book that makes one question love, fate, destiny and passion. I kept thinking of the one I’d lost and wondering what I’d do if that person walked back into my life. Lyrical, eager and lustful, practically from the very first page when the heroine is musing about all the boys she sees around her, this is the kind of novel that can sweep you off your feet and render you breathless.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reminds me of Mrs. Calaban. A divorced woman with a long dead boyfriend from high school meets "him" again and falls in love. Lots of fun with her conniving best friend Missy, her sex-addict husband George and F. Scott - the reincarnation of her old boyfriend. An easy read with high entertainment value. Took no time to plow through this story.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

If there were half stars, I'd give this three and a half, it was a good book. What an interesting concept - a young man comes into the narrator's life that has the same name and the same face as a boy she loved in high school that died. It toes the line of ghosts/etc without going all the way into supernatural.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started to read this book in a store and only was able to read the first few pages but it got me hooked. Then when i saw it on a discount books table a few months later I immediately picked it up! Its a great fun read for the summer about love/lust/college romances.

[Meredith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sort of neutral about this book. While I didn't really buy into the story line I did find myself reading it pretty quickly and not wanting to put it down.

I guess I would call it a mildly entertaining short read if you are looking for something light to read.

[Sheila · Rating 2 out of 5]

Swept into the sexy story and relationship issues but ultimately disliked the protagonist too much to love the book. Supporting characters mostly unsavory as well. Also a little hard to believe the premise and the fact that this mature woman could not get over a high school romance.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea was a little weird but it was a nice quick read.

[Suzanne Macartney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Total diversion. Fun. Old romance comes back to haunt. Art student and admissions officer. Made into a film with Laura Linney.

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

fluffy, but good, story about possible reincarnation of an old love

[Jessica]

This is a perfectly crafted novel. Loved it!

[Iulia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Louise gets a second chance at her first love when she meets his doppelganger many years later. All characters in this story lacked any sort of passion such subject might be inclined to have.

[Gina Lutes]

Not memorable.