spoof/review of Don't Call That Man! from the Boston Globe 2000- VERY FUNNY

spoof/review of Don't Call That Man! from the Boston Globe 2000- VERY FUNNY/VERY ENTERTAINING
by DIANE WHITE


Emma Bovary sighs. She weeps. Rodolphe, the love of her life, has deserted her. She must have him or die.
What's this?
A book has arrived in the post. "Don't Call That Man! A Survival Guide to Letting Go."
Emma doesn't recall requesting this book. Yet the author's oddly euphonious name, Rhonda Findling, resonates. Did she perhaps write any of those forbidden romantic novels Emma devoured so many years ago at her convent school?
Emma has time to kill. She opens the book and reads:
"Sheila, an attractive 27-year-old computer programmer, sat in her apartment staring at the telephone. She yearned to call Tony, a handsome life insurance agent she had been dating for the past six months."
Oh Sheila, I know your pain, thinks Emma, I, too, yearn to call the man I love, even though the telephone won't be invented for another 40 years or so.
Emma reads on and learns that Sheila's heart sank when Tony said he didn't "see himself" marrying her.
Cruel Tony! Cruel Rodolphe!
"Now Sheila felt alone and desperate. She wanted to be with Tony on any terms. . . she couldn't bear the thought of life without him."
Emma feels faint and throws herself onto a nearby divan. However, just prior to falling into a serious swoon, she picks up the book again and turns to another chapter. After answering a series of probing questions posed by the author, Emma comes to realize that she has turned to Rodolphe, a classic "ambivalent man" type, because she is the victim of inadequate fathering.
I am a victim, says Emma to herself. I have always suspected as much. She reads on.
"Whenever there is a loss, you have to feel the pain of the loss," Rhonda Findling advises.
Emma learns that she must get in touch with her grief and give herself permission to experience her pain. She howls and weeps and rolls on the Turkish carpet and beats her tiny fists against the cold, hard plaster walls.
After an hour or so of refusing to deny her pain, Emma feels much better. Now what?
Emma turns once again to the book and reads about the crucial importance of having a network of understanding friends. She decides to start a "Don't Call That Man!" support group for literary figures in similar straits. Anna Karenina is the first to join. Tess Durbeyfield comes around, and brings Scarlett O'Hara.
"Hester Prynne wanted to be here but she couldn't get a sitter," Tess tells Emma.
Together they work through the "Don't Call That Man!" 10-step program. Step nine, they all agree, is the most difficult. It requires each of them to keep an hour-by-hour diary describing any urges they may have to call their former lovers and how they manage to resist calling. They all agree that the total lack of telephones makes not calling a lot easier than it might be otherwise.
Emma and Anna, Tess and Scarlett consider Findling's suggestions for self-nurturing. This is a very important part of the healing process, Findling writes. Go to Paris. Get your hair done. Go shopping. Go to concerts. Go off your diet and eat desserts all day long. Go to the movies. They decide to do it all, even go to the movies, as soon as someone invents them.
In Paris, Emma has an idea. "Let's get a literary agent and write no-holds-barred, tell-all memoirs for big money," she says.
And so they do, and they live happily ever after.