If the ending wasn't a tacked on, clensed deus ex machina bile of shit, I might have recommended this book to you all. In fact, up until the last chapter, it is a wonderful book.
Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour is the (mostly) delightful tale of an obsessive-compulsive, neurotic, death-obsessed self-made eccentric millionare with a hardon for our thirteenth president, who rattles off long diatribes like this one:
Frankly, the way I see it, the human race has simply romanticized a basic physiological process into something lofty and exalted. Why? Who knows? Perhaps because we humans are a little embarrassed about the odd, bestial contortions that these nasty hormones and their chemical cohorts compel us to perform. All that huffing and puffing, all that uncivilized grunting and moaning, all that orgasm faking, all those bodily fluids flying hither and thither. I suppose the urge for ordinary sexual congress was simply too undignified for the superior human species, so some arrogant but resourceful Neanderthal with a flower garden invented the concept of romantic love and it becaume, through the ages, a very profitable venture, particularly when one considers the price of a dozen roses and a small box of Godiva chocolates.
I don't actually believe this, but it's still well-written and fun. And, of course, he starts seeing someone. Not just anyone, but his shrink's estranged, death-obsessed, hypochondriac ex-wife. Oh, the fun times. I love it when eccentric characters bounce off each other, like AbFab or Arrested Development.
At least until the ending. Man, it sucked. I literally threw the book across the room when I finished it. The library's getting back a copy with a battered cover, that's for sure.
