McLAUGHLIN, Ritta

PERSONAL:

Female. Education: Vassar College, B.A.; New School for Social Research, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Office—c/o Doubleday, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER:

Investment banker and author. Worked in public sector; employed at investment banking firm as vice president, New York, NY, c. early 2000s.

WRITINGS:

Every Friday Night: My Year of Dating Misadventures, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

When New York-based investment banker Ritta McLaughlin's long engagement ended badly, she decided to spend every Friday night for one year going on dates with different men. The results of her dating experiment are chronicled in her nonfiction book, Every Friday Night: My Year of Dating Misadventure, which is based on a journal she kept over the year. Critics have compared the book to the hit television show Sex and the City, the popular novel Bridget Jones' Diary, and novels by Terry McMillan. Over the course of one year McLaughlin dated a number of men she met in a variety of settings, many of whom did not live up to her expectations. While a reviewer for Publishers Weekly called McLaughlin's writing only average, the reviewer felt "her descriptions with men ring true."A contributor to Kirkus Reviews praised McLaughlin's stories, calling the book as a whole "tart and quick."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Entertainment Weekly, July 25, 2003, S. Tia Brown, review of Every Friday Night: My Year of Dating Misadventures, p. 44.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2003, review of Every Friday Night, p. 734.

Publishers Weekly, June 2, 2003, review of Every Friday Night, p. 44.

ONLINE

Chico News & Review,http://www.newsreview.com/ (July 17, 2003), Marsha Davison, review of Every Friday Night: My Year of Dating Misadventures.

Official Ritta McLaughlin Web site,http://www.rittabook.com (February 20, 2004).*