Specs and the city

After reading this book, my first thought was that Toby Young was a much bigger loser than I had previously imagined. Because Cad - a flipsided How to Lose Friends and Alienate People - presents a picture of a young, single, media New York where a divorced, bespectacled man with a limited range of chatup lines has to practically fight women off with a stick (poor Toby was more likely to get hit with one).

Rick Marin, a style and showbiz journalist like TY, is on much the same quest - to get laid by as many glamorous Sex-and-the-City style babes as possible. Following the breakup of his marriage at the age of 28 he hurls himself into serial dating with a manic intensity that makes Samantha Jones look like her one-woman-guy namesake, Bridget.

Simply by removing his spectacles at a key point during dinner, wiggling them seductively, and then talking in heartfelt tones about his recent divorce, he seems to achieve about an 80 per cent strike rate (and make no mistake, strike rate is what this book is about).

In the wrong hands, subject matter like this would make for not only a potentially tedious book, but one that would irritate men and inflame women.

The title - Cad - certainly implies that this is part of the intention. But, in fact, Marin is such a good, observant, funny writer, that he gets away with the outrageous "women I have schtupped" premise. If his charm as a date is as potent as his charm as a writer, then it's no wonder he was a babe magnet.

A "male Sex and the City" is very much the marketing concept behind this book, and that's pretty much what it is - not merely because of the centrality of dating to the narrative, but because of its urbanity and sophistication.

An almost mythic metropolitan scene is conjured. Marin's whole life seems to be parties, gallery openings, lunches, chance sexual encounters and characters out of a latter day Algonquin set.

Like SATC, the dating and glamour is only apparently the point of the exercise. What really makes the thing tick is acute observations about the way people are, and the shape of life in the urban jungle.

This brings another TV series to mind: Seinfeld. As in Seinfeld (and the show's creator, Larry David) Marin riffs brilliantly about everyday stuff.

He has a friend obsessed with loofahs - "Do you premoisten your loofah or enjoy a dry loof?"

He takes a date to a frighteningly expensive restaurant: "I looked at the menu, saw the word penne, and latched on to it." His best (female) friend is writing a book on men entitled You Call This a Gender?