Writing Personals: A Novel

Wanted: One man of average height, well-muscled but not ironclad, neither overly or underly handsome, with more body hair than a baby’s behind but less than a gorilla, hefty penis, charge not too easily discharged, good mind, good sense of humour and humouring, joyful spirit, for a relationship of indeterminate time with a recently divorced woman who misses it.

Meet a world of offbeat characters in pursuit of love. Writing Personals is a funny, intellectual, raunchy, and sweet novel that takes aim at contemporary mating practices, middle-class values, and marriage for love as the glue of society. This is a quirky book in the vein of Tristram Shandy.

Sylvia Weisler is under contract with a small publisher to write a non-fiction book about personals advertising. She focuses on the middle-aged and older group who utilize print media rather than on the “too vast territory” of twenty-somethings and the Internet. Interviews with a variety of “persons”-people who place and respond to ads-appear throughout the book. Some of these characters remain interviewees-material for Sylvia’s book; others, however, enter the author’s private life and become enmeshed in the plot. This is held together by the major narrative thread-Sylvia’s own search for love.