Animal Husbandry, by Laura Zigman (Hutchinson, £10 in UK)

When the narrator of this comic novel is dumped by the man of her dreams, she develops a theory about relationships which she calls "new cow theory". The theory, and I swear I kid you not, goes something like this: men dump women because men are really bulls and bulls won't do the business with the same cow more than once. This theory so impresses the narrator's best friend - who happens to be a magazine editor - that she persuades the narrator to write a regular column under a pseudo-scientific pseudonym. Laura Zigman is clearly trying to hit the zany, see-if-I-care note which served Helen Fielding so well in Bridget Jones's Diary, but misses by a mile. The result is a clumsy, silly book which is about as funny as a dose of mad cow disease.