LaROSE, Lawrence 1964(?)-

PERSONAL: Born c. 1964; married Susan Michele Lamontagne (a businessperson), September 30, 2000; children: Jackson Lamontagne. Education: Attended St. Thomas College; New York University, master's degree.

ADDRESSES: Home—Sag Harbor, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 38 Soho Sq., London W1D 3HB, England.

CAREER: Writer and editor. Has worked for a software company, as a carpenter, and as a building contractor.

WRITINGS:

(With Nate Penn) The Code: Time-tested Secrets forGetting What You Want from Women—Without Marrying Them!, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1996.

Gutted: Down to the Studs in My House, My Marriage, My Entire Life, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2004.

The Code has been published in German, Japanese, Italian, Czech, and Spanish.

SIDELIGHTS: Writer and editor Lawrence LaRose has gone from writing about winning over women without getting married to his more recent adventures in marriage and renovating the family home. As the coauthor with Nate Penn of The Code: Time-tested Secrets for Getting What You Want from Women—Without Marrying Them!, LaRose provides men with instructions on dating and avoiding the ultimate bachelor's trap: marriage. "The book is absolutely about avoiding commitment at all costs," LaRose wrote in a New York Times article, pointing out that the book is partially a response to the previously published The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. The authors' comic take on remaining a bachelor while wooing the opposite sex includes such tips as "Bite the buttons off her shirt the first time you make love."

Ironically, just one year after The Code was published, LaRose disregarded his own advice, meeting a woman and proposing to her within a few months. After their marriage, the couple decided to leave New York City and move to Sag Harbor, New York, where they began to renovate a dilapidated "fixer-upper." The experience resulted in LaRose's second book, Gutted: Down to the Studs in My House, My Marriage, My Entire Life. LaRose recounts the couple's personal story of home renovation and how the stress and financial costs nearly resulted in a divorce. The renovation led not only to disputes concerning what and how to do the renovating, but also depleted the couple's savings, all of this after LaRose had lost his job with a software company while his wife continued to commute back and forth to New York City for her public relations job. Unemployed and with no training in construction, LaRose takes a series of entry-level construction jobs, hoping to learn enough about carpentry and other home-repair skills to work on his own house. As a result, the book includes a look at what Penelope Green, writing in the New York Times, called "a series of sitcom-worthy construction crews." In the course of their story, LaRose describes the increasing pressure brought by his wife's pregnancy and battles with the local zoning boarding, as well as their increasing credit card debt. Ultimately, after two-and-a-half trying years, the LaRoses' child is born and their dream home is completed. In the process, the couple spent nearly $250,000 on the renovation and, as described by Green, "ran headlong into their own values—about money, gender roles, work—at every turn." Nevertheless, LaRose states in the book that the ordeal also taught him "how to be married."

Writing a review of Gutted in the Library Journal, Mark Bay noted, "Enjoyable, readable, and humorous, this book will appeal to anyone who has ever built or remodeled a home." While Allan Johnson wrote in the Chicago Tribune that "if you're not a fan of the intricacies of home improvement, you'll be bored and lost," Los Angeles Times writer Susan Salter Reynolds noted that "there are serious lessons and real-life values" in the book. Reynolds went on to comment, "LaRose applies a David Sedaris-style humor and his fancy-pants education . . . to one of the benchmarks of this crazy American life, and triumphs." Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, Marie Ewald concluded, "If the Hamptons is a paragon of gracious living, LaRose's story is a hilarious counterpoint."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

LaRose, Lawrence, and Nate Penn, The Code: Time-tested Secrets for Getting What You Want from Women—Without Marrying Them!, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1996.

LaRose, Lawrence, Gutted: Down to the Studs in MyHouse, My Marriage, My Entire Life, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2004.

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, August 6, 2004, Jim Shea, review of Gutted, p. 4; September 19, 2004, Allan Johnson, review of Gutted, p. 2.

Christian Science Monitor, Marie Ewald, review of Gutted: Down to the Studs in My House, My Marriage, My Entire Life, p. 17.

Guardian (London, England), December 18, 1997, Stephen Poole, review of The Code: Time-Tested Secrets for Getting What You Want from Women—Without Marrying Them!, p. T10.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2004, review of Gutted, p. 312.

Library Journal, July, 2004, Mark Bay, review of Gutted, p. 106.

Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2004, Susan Salter Reynolds, review of Gutted, p. R11.

New York Times, October 1, 2000, "Susan LaMontagne, Lawrence LaRose," p. 9; June 20, 2004, Penelope Green, review of Gutted, p. 11.

Publishers Weekly, June 9, 1997, "Male Response," p. 19; May 3, 2004, review of Gutted, p. 181.*