Love Is a Canoe

Peter Herman is something of a folk hero. Marriage Is a Canoe, his legendary, decades-old book on love and relationships, has won the hearts of hopeful romantics and desperate cynics alike. He and his beloved wife lived a relatively peaceful life in upstate New York. But now it's 2010, and Peter's wife has just died. Completely lost, he passes the time with a woman he admires but doesn't love — and he begins to look back through the pages of his book and question homilies such as:

A good marriage is a canoe — it needs care and isn't meant to hold too much — no more than two adults and a few kids.

Its advice he has famously doled out for decades. But what is it worth?

Then Peter receives a call from Stella Petrovic, an ambitious young editor who wants to celebrate the fif­tieth anniversary of Marriage Is a Canoe with a contest for struggling couples. The prize? An afternoon with Peter and a chance to save their relationship.

The contest ensnares its creator in the largely opaque politics of her publishing house while it introduces the reader to couples in various states of distress, including a shy thirtysomething Brooklynite and her charismatic and entrepreneurial husband, who may just be a bit too charismatic for the good of their marriage. There's the middle-aged publisher whose imposing manner has managed to impose loneliness on her for longer than she cares to admit. And then there is Peter, who must discover what he meant when he wrote Marriage Is a Canoe if he is going to help the contest's winners and find a way to love again.

In Love Is a Canoe, Ben Schrank delivers a smart, funny, romantic, and hugely satisfying novel about the fragility of marriage and the difficulty of repairing the damage when well-intentioned people forget how to be good to each other.

"Three stories of personal and literary authenticity weave through this novel of love and books that gets sharper and smarter as it progresses. Forty years ago, Peter Herman penned Love Is a Canoe, a memoir and meditation on marriage that retains a devoted following. Canoe's homilies from Peter's adolescent summer spent in upstate New York with his grandparents as his own parents' marriage crumbled contain a certain enduring quality: 'A good marriage is a canoe — it needs care and isn't meant to hold too much — no more than two adults and a couple of kids.' But as the recently widowed author ponders the course of his marriage and current relationship, straining against late-middle age, there's a danger that his personal and literary fictions will unravel. The danger grows acute when Stella, a young book editor trying to spur sales on Canoe's 40th anniversary, creates a contest for a couple in trouble; winners will spend an afternoon with the somewhat reclusive author in the hopes that their troubled relationship will be rescued. But as Emily and Eli Corelli, a young Brooklyn couple with a rocky marriage, enter Peter's orbit, they, Peter, and Stella confront the underlying truths of their lives. The honesty doled out as events unspool is bracing and frank, and give these characters added depth and wisdom. This is the third novel from Schrank (after Miracle Man), president and publisher of Razorbill. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME Entertainment." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

“With brilliant subtlety, Schrank reveals the ways that popular bromides about marriage can impede true connection and longlasting love. Love Is a Canoe is a sharply funny, beautifully original novel filled with tough-minded characters, great dialogue, and a riveting plot.” Kate Christensen, author of The Astral and The Great Man

"I don't think of myself as loving particular kinds of fiction, but this book made me realize I do: fiction, for instance, like this — smart, darkly funny (but not jokey) books that are knowing and wise but a little skeptical of knowingness and the possibility of wisdom. Love Is a Canoe would join Martin Amis's The Information and Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys on my shelf devoted to terrific satirical novels about writers and publishing, if I had such a shelf." Kurt Andersen, author of True Believers and Heyday

"Love Is a Canoe captures the most essential difficulties of marriage and commitment — our fears of love and loss. A brilliant book of do-overs and second chances, Schrank's novel is mordantly funny and an all-too-real meditation on modern life." A. M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven and This Book Will Save Your Life

"Love Is a Canoe takes a good look at the world of self-help and both mocks and embraces our dearest and corniest desires. Ben Schrank's terrific new novel is a real self-help book, and you should help yourself to it." Daniel Handler, author of Why We Broke Up

"It's not surprising that Ben Schrank would produce a witty, insightful novel about the world of publishing. The real revelation here is how wise Schrank is while navigating the far more complicated terrain of love and human relationships. Love Is a Canoe is a wonderful and deceptively breezy novel — heartfelt and wise; light as feathers, strong as iron." Adam Langer, author of Crossing California and The Thieves of Manhattan

"Schrank has done something here that may sound impossible: He's written a funny novel about publishing that is not caustic but optimistic, not biting but bighearted — a story about the delusions with which self-aware, smart people are all too willing to live in order to avoid the painful (yet entertaining) upheaval that comes with truth." Dean Bakopoulos, The New York Times Book Review

"Schrank has firm command of the story, never letting the plot turns descend into farce, and the closing pages are a convincing portrait of how relationships shift in ways no self-help book can anticipate. A wise imagining of modern-day love, unromantic but never cynical." Kirkus Reviews

Peter Herman is something of a folk hero. Marriage Is a Canoe, his legendary, decades-old book on love and relationships, has won the hearts of hope­ful romantics and desperate cynics alike. He and his beloved wife lived a relatively peaceful life in upstate New York. But now its 2010, and Peters wife has just died. Completely lost, he passes the time with a woman he admires but doesnt love—and he begins to look back through the pages of his book and question hom­ilies such as:

A good marriage is a canoe—it needs care and isnt meant to hold too much—no more than two adults and a few kids.

Its advice he has famously doled out for decades. But what is it worth?

Then Peter receives a call from Stella Petrovic, an ambitious young editor who wants to celebrate the fif­tieth anniversary of Marriage Is a Canoe with a contest for struggling couples. The prize? An afternoon with Peter and a chance to save their relationship.

The contest ensnares its creator in the largely opaque politics of her publishing house while it intro­duces the reader to couples in various states of distress, including a shy thirtysomething Brooklynite and her charismatic and entrepreneurial husband, who may just be a bit too charismatic for the good of their marriage. Theres the middle-aged publisher whose im­posing manner has managed to impose loneliness on her for longer than she cares to admit. And then there is Peter, who must discover what he meant when he wrote Marriage Is a Canoe if he is going to help the contests winners and find a way to love again.

In Love Is a Canoe, Ben Schrank delivers a smart, funny, romantic, and hugely satisfying novel about the fragility of marriage and the difficulty of repairing the damage when well-intentioned people forget how to be good to each other.

Ben Schrank is the president and publisher of Razorbill, a Penguin imprint that is home to many award-winning and New York Times-bestselling books for children and young adults. He is also the author of the novels Consent and Miracle Man and has had residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. In the 1990s, he wrote “Ben's Life,” a monthly column for Seventeen magazine. He grew up in Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife and son.