Dating Tips for the Unemployed

Crafty comic writer Iris Smyles continues to follow the life of her fictional antihero, Iris, in Dating Tips for the Unemployed. In Smyles's first novel, Iris Has Free Time, Iris was a young, single New Yorker grappling with life after college and the pitfalls of young adulthood. In the new novel, Iris is now 35 and still single. Though she's grown older, she continues to struggle with hard-won wisdom as she resumes her witty, self-deprecating and often self-defeating search for a place in the world.

This time around, Iris--an aspiring writer largely supported economically by her politically right-leaning Greek family--has completed her second master's degree and feels that she needs to find a man and get married "before I gain any more weight, before I get too old, before people start to talk." That quest, channeled through Iris's lovably downtrodden, often absentminded perspective, is not easy to accomplish. In 24 short, eclectic episodes, Iris--a wry observer and keen philosophical thinker--shares stories about men, dating, work (and the lack thereof), loneliness, friendship, sex, literature, costume parties, growing older, time travel, insomnia, Greek mythology and the complete series of Rocky movies. A large cast of family, friends, lovers and strangers enhance the very funny details of Iris's rich, authentic urban odyssey.

Smyles delivers another clever, insightful glimpse into the often absurd existence of an intellectual young woman who makes the idea of floundering in life into a laudable art form. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

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