Pub Date: June 28th, 2016
Pages: 320
Stalled on the precipice of adulthood, Iris doesn’t know where her life post-college will lead and, to be honest, it’s not a primary concern. She’s tried applying for jobs, she’s dipped her toes into dating, and she’s become Manhattan’s resident expert at finding ways to distract herself from what she really wants to do.
When she does sit down to write, what emerges are meditations on small talk, family, arctic exploration, cannibalism, quantum physics, literary immortality, etiquette guides, memory, dreams, loneliness, growing up, and growing old. A refreshing blend of Proust and Holly Golightly, Iris covers it all.
Evoking the screwball heroines of a bygone age as she finds herself often a little lost in her own, Iris relates hilarious and heartbreaking episodes. A mature book about immaturity, Dating Tips for the Unemployed is a wistful, melancholic, madcap, and erudite picaresque about the miserable fun of trying to find a career, love, and yourself at home and abroad.
Advanced Praise for Dating Tips for the Unemployed
“Structured in small episodes like Homer's Odyssey, which serves as an epigraph for the book, Smyles' adventuress calls to mind a Jane Bowles heroine who's read Ulysses while scrolling in despair through 10 open apps on her iPhone. Smyles' portrayal of Iris in all her weirdness offers much to recognize, fear, and embrace. Walking the line between self-obsession and thoughtful portraiture, Smyles explores an inextricable link between sex and loneliness, self-loathing and self-acceptance in contemporary New York.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Iris Smyles has reinvented Sally Bowles and Holly Golightly for the 21st century.”
—Edmund White, author of City Boy and Marcel Proust: A Life
“An incandescent weave of fiction, essay, and spoof…. Iris Smyles is an original and her fictional doppelgänger ‘Iris Smyles’ is one of literature's most charismatic innocents, a Donna Quixote lost in the new world.”
—Frederic Tuten, author of Tin Tin in the New World
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About the Author
New York Observer, Best American Travel Writing 2015, and other publications. Her first novel, Iris Has Free Time, was published in 2013.
Find out more about Iris on her website and connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.
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