The Backlash! - February 1995

Book Review: How to Dump Your Wife

1994, Lee Covington, $25, Fender Publishing, 1111 East Madison, Suite 460, Seattle WA 98122

review by Raj Kumar Singh

Copyright 1994 by Raj Kumar Singh

If provocative titles are progenitors of success, then Lee Covington's book How to Dump Your Wife (HTDYW) is destined for best-sellers lists everywhere. To facilitate this goal, however, the Seattle author would be well advised to market this abomination in plastic shrink-wrap or sell it only through mail order on an "all sales final" basis. This, because for the wise reader, only sixty seconds of prepurchase examination shows that this isn't a book to be taken seriously on any level.

Covington purports to hold a Master's Degree in English Literature from NYU, but judging by her constant use of 3 word sentences her background as a children's book editor is more telling. The highest and best use of this work may be to serve as a shining example to writers everywhere of the folly of self-publishing. (If the most experienced and greediest publishers in North America didn't think this volume would line their pockets with green, why does Covington think she knows better?)

The author states that HTDYW "is a combination of humor and self-help" and that "the information contained within it does not constitute legal advice or assistance in any respect." But I see nothing humorous about the subject of extracting oneself from the clutches of some nefarious bitch who only sees two alternatives in life -- keep you or trash you. The only true self-help involved is the writer helping herself to your $25 for this 160-page insult. And, truth is, this book is chock full of legal advice -- and, woe be unto the fool who follows it!

A few words of advice to Lee Covington from a writer who's apparently as successful at getting real book publishers to look at his writing as she is: reprint this nutty piece in soft cover and cut out enough pages so that you can sell it for, say, $4.95 as an Xmas gag gift. Better yet, study real men's-issues literature and find something worthwhile to say before you rush to the podium.


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