Man of the Year

A Memoir

By: Lou Cove

Narrated by: Fred Berman

For one 1970’s family, the center may not hold, but it certainly does fold.

In 1978 Jimmy Carter mediates the Camp David Accords, Fleetwood Mac tops charts with Rumours, Starsky fights crime with Hutch, and twelve-year-old Lou Cove is uprooted from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Salem, Massachusetts– a backwater town of witches, Puritans, and sea-captain wannabes. After his eighth move in a dozen years, Lou figures he should just resign himself to a teenage purgatory of tedious paper routes, school bullies, and unrequited lust for every girl he likes.

Then one October morning an old friend of Lou’s father, free-wheeling (and free-loving) Howie Gordon arrives at the Cove doorstep from California with his beautiful wife Carly. Howie is everything Lou wants to be: handsome as a movie star, built like a god and in possession of an unstoppable confidence.

Then, over Thanksgiving dinner, Howie drops a bombshell. Holding up an issue of Playgirl Magazine, he flips to the center and there he is, Mr. November in all his natural glory. Howie has his eye on becoming the next Burt Reynolds, and a wild idea for how to do it: win Playgirl’s Man of the Year. And he knows just who should manage his campaign. As Lou and Howie canvas Salem for every vote in town – little old ladies at bridge club, the local town witch, construction workers on break and everyone in between – Lou is forced to juggle the perils of adolescence with the pursuit of Hollywood stardom.

Man of the Year is the improbable true story of Lou’s thirteenth year, one very unusual campaign, and the unexpected guest who changes everything.

Wonderful Book

Just a great story of growing up and a confusing time and place in a boys life. Terrific look at how the men in Lou’s life impacted him. I can relate. Berman was the perfect choice to read it.

Very Engaging

I could not stop listening to this book, at times sitting in parking lots or my driveway, to get to the end of the authors thought,
I often laughed out loud, or listened with my mouth open, incredulous that this is a true story! Lou Cove transports you into the mind (and wacky family) of a 13 year old boy, and somehow brings to life universal joy and pain, admiration and disappointment. Very well written, I finished the audiobook with so many more questions, wishing there was a follow up book.