fiction/humor. I was not expecting a work of literature, but I wasn't expecting a tedious list of un-funny jokes either. This might be better in audio/delivered in person?

The first chapter was pages about various people talking too much/telling her it's not too late to find love--sort of amusing, but not a hook. The second chapter is apparently a very long series of jokes (a couple pages of them detailing "This is how pathetic my unemployment is," then another few pages of them explaining "this is how pathetic my dating life is," and so on). I'm all for self-deprecation, but this was tedious, like a bunch of ideas for jokes that a comedienne might write out before honing one or two or three of the best storylines.

And that is as far as I got. ( )

Dating Tips for the Unemployed by Iris Smyles



Powered by failures real and imagined, copious amounts of pot and booze, the seemingly ever-present threat of masturbation, and topics way more outré than these, Dating Tips for the Unemployed is a charming (yes, charming!), bravura performance by a writer whose comic chops, literary inventiveness, and crisp prose produce the smoothest of literary smoothies, something like a cocktail of Dorothy Parker, James Joyce, and Philip Roth iced, sweetened, and blended.

Reading Smyles it almost seems impossible that someone could pack this much goodness into one book. Never giving up intelligence for readability, or wit for cheap laughs, this is a slim volume I had to struggle to put down. Perhaps it’s the narrator’s youth, perhaps her emotional and intellectual honesty (cut as it is with humor); whatever the case, these pages race by, their words nonetheless filling your thoughts long after you’ve set aside Dating Tips for the Unemployed.

From summering in Greece to being busted flat in wintry Manhattan, Smyles somehow punctuates the troubles of youth with a philosophy that mixes sarcasm and nihilism but does it in a way that never gets too heavy. Constructed as an expression of polar opposites, Dating Tips for the Unemployed is an attempt to explore the world that is Iris Smyles and perhaps, in its finely chiseled structure, even an attempt to understand it. Whether this story amounts to fiction, nonfiction, or something in between ultimately doesn’t matter. The key point is engagement: the fact that you’re sure to be smitten as I was with the work of this wildly funny literary misanthrope.

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/kbaumeister/2016/08/the-nervous-breakdowns-re... ( )