In The Hypothetical Girl, Elizabeth Cohen's first collection of stories, the protagonists (mostly women, mostly ages 30-50) leap onto Internet dating sites with a kind of hopeless abandon.
Cohen (The Family on Beartown Road) illustrates the many ways that online courting can go astray, from the bachelor with the silver Audi convertible who turns out to be bald with "a shiny crown of tanned flesh, like a yarmulke that had vacationed in Florida" to the Icelandic yak farmer who's really a police officer in Akron. Perhaps the most haunting and sad story is "Life Underground," where Alana longs for a family like that of her sister, whose husband, Peter, is a novelist who spends his time "in the garage doing some manly garage thing." Yet when she finally discovers Max, a seemingly compatible partner, Alana holds off his requests for a personal meeting. Visiting her sister's house, Alana discovers Peter's porn-filled laptop; she never does connect in person with Max, deciding that it is better that he "live in her computer, under circuits and a motherboard and back inside the walls of her house."
If there is a serious lesson in Cohen's rom-com of Internet dating, it might be that learned by Clarissa in "Dog People," who accepts that who she is may be not too bad: "a woman in the middle of her own imperfect but cozy universe, a life made of yoga stretches and yogurt smoothies, mornings with coffee on her back porch, taking in the day." --Bruce Jacobs