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Fanning the Flames by Blumenthal

At 52, widowed ad man Matt Moore, now a New York Times auto reporter, revisits six old flames while chasing a story about a canceled small car.

About the book

Matt Moore, at 52, sees his life heading nowhere. His wife, Audrey, died tragically three years ago. His rewarding career as one of advertising's star copywriters has come to a sudden, unexpected end, and his current job, as a reporter for the Sunday New York Times "Automobiles" section appears to be a dead end.

  • Joanie Nye -- his first love in high school and now the wife of one of his best friends,
  • Patricia Ballard -- his college sweetheart at Northwestern and currently the wife of Bruce Ballard, a philandering State Senator from Connecticut,
  • Sandy Simon -- the first woman he slept with, under a canoe at summer camp where they were counselors,
  • Toby Blair -- an actress he cast in a Ford TV commercial and now a soap star in New York,
  • Francesca Conti -- an Italian film stylist he met during a film job in Rome,
  • Judy Anders -- a secretary he was infatuated with at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, now married to a British banker.

    • Each encounter presents its own obstacles and results, some comic, some fulfilling and one hopefully lasting. We learn more about the power of his love for his dead wife, how they met and how she died, and we see how each of his past loves comes to affect his current existence, and he theirs.

    Counterpointing his romantic sorties into the past is his assignment from the Times to find out why one of America's leading automakers has canceled the much-ballyhooed introduction of a new small car. The quest gives him an opportunity to revisit and exact revenge from an old enemy, Larry Wiley, the Chairman of the advertising agency which fired him unjustifiably after he had led the team that won the minicar account for the agency.

    Matt Moore's retrotrip back to his old flames is a mix of honest affection and humorous misadventure.

    Fanning the Flames is written in the first person.

    Archived from the Harris Literary Agency website. The agency's listing is reproduced as published, with contact details removed.

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