Animal Husbandry

"Men: They will never make sense. You will never understand them." --Laura Zigman

Laura Zigman courageously left a shining career in the New York publishing world, and the familiar comforts that went along with it, to finish Animal Husbandry. Now, just two years later, her novel -- a hilarious portrayal of one woman's attempts to decipher the mating patterns of modern man -- is sold in 14 countries, and the film rights have been bought by Fox 2000.

Hers began as a simple cow-meets-bull story: She, Jane Goodall (no, not the Jane Goodall) was the single, overachieving prime-time talk show producer with her heart on the shelf; Ray was the young executive producer with the J. Crew good looks and, it seemed, a love life as lonely as Jane's. They met for drinks, fell in love (so she thought), and looked for an apartment together. Then suddenly, inexplicably, after only three months, Ray was gone. Lost to a jungle of unreturned phone calls and unrequited love.

When Jane, suddenly homeless, reluctantly moves in with Eddie Alden, her swaggering, womanizing coworker, she finds herself in the belly of the beast itself -- the alpha male -- and discovers, too, that she's not alone in the vast pasture of the brokenhearted. With a copy of Darwin's Origin Of Species in one hand and a notebook in the other, Jane sets up base camp at Eddie's and begins her research -- on Eddie's bizarre chase-and-flee rituals, on the always-unlucky pairings of her best friends, David and Joan, and on her own love affair with Ray -- all in a desperate attempt to unlock the mysterious methods of the male animal.

Soon Jane has stacks of theories and a budding career as a pseudonymous sexual behaviorist. But conclusions, of course, prove as elusive as love itself, and nothing is as simple as it seems in this whip-smart, hilarious, and wonderfully wise debut novel about men, women, and the strange taxonomy of the human heart.