Présentation de l'éditeur
Love meets technology with a dash of quirk in this collection of highly original short stories
An aspiring actress meets an Icelandic Yak farmer on a matchmaking Web site. An online forum for cancer support turns into a love triangle for an English professor, a Canadian fisherman, and an elementary school teacher living in Japan. A deer and a polar bear flirt via Skype. In
The Hypothetical Girl a menagerie of characters graze and jockey, play and hook up in the online dating world with mixed and sometimes dark results. Flirting and communicating in chat rooms, through texts, e-mails, and IMs, they grope their way through a virtual maze of potential mates, falling in and out of what they think and hope may be true love.
With levity and high style, Cohen takes her readers into a world where screen and keyboard meet the heart, with consequences that range from wonderful to weird.
The Hypothetical Girl captures all the mystery, misery, and magic of the eternal search for human connection.
Extrait
From "Love, Really"
You want to believe in a future with the man. But the future is cloudy, like the lake that extends from your head now when you sleep is cloudy. You want to believe that love is strong. You want to believe. This is the part where you say you want to fix it, this thing of you. “Fix what?” he asks. “Nothing is broken.” You realize that you and the man are having completely different experiences. You and he are not in the same love affair but in two separate ones. It is a mere coincidence that they happen to be with each other.
This is the part where you go back online to the romance website and see that the man has been very active there, in the time since you have met. This is the part where the place under your ribs sighs. This is the part where you cry. This is the part where you try to teach your mouth how to say it. How to say goodbye to a man who is a country where you wanted to emigrate. A man whose face was so familiar.
This is the part where you realize: It is what it is.
This is the part where you realize you will, in fact, take. One. Day. At. A. Time.
Revue de presse
"[An] astonishingly inventive collection of stories...I don't think I've ever read anything more original..." —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You"With desperation or ambivalence, obsession or just plain hope, Cohen’s characters navigate the mysterious etiquette of digital-age romance, often getting lost in the fever of a potential idyllic relationship that falters by the first date. Though many of these stories parallel each other and occasionally slip into bitter, cynical narratives, Cohen is at her best when she departs from conventional romantic comedy plots and explores what we think about when we anticipate love." —Publishers Weekly"A daring biopsy of what is rapidly becoming the dominant romantic conundrum; love between absolute strangers." —Los Angeles Review"Clearly, this book is about the state of modern romance, but it's also about our timeless fascination with identity—a weighty subject that Cohen handles with intelligence and a dash of much-needed whimsical comedy." —Oprah.com "To describe the sharp and sensitive stories in Elizabeth Cohen’s collection
The Hypothetical Girl as updates on the pursuit of love is to sell them short….a curious moment in time preserved and anatomized by an insightful writer."
—Jill Magazine
“Cohen has the eye of an anthropologist, the wit of a satirist, and the brevity of a poet." —Jill Eisenstadt, author of
From Rockaway and
Kiss Out
"Elizabeth Cohen's stories, with their deep eternal truths, plop into the now with all the promise, hope and excitement of an IM from a secret love." —Wendy Lawless, author of
Chanel Bonfire
“These stories kick some serious ass. If you're looking for love you'll find it right here!” —David Kidd, Emmy nominated television writer, producer and screenwriter of
Yours, Mine and Ours"I
