A Big Ol' Drama Queen

Single and in the city, Emily Sanders is exhausted with the Los Angeles dating scene. She’s tried every type of man there is and has yet to find The One. She decides to seek professional help apparently because listening to friends and family tell her what she already knows, but refuses to acknowledge, is tiring. Her main motivation, however, for seeing Dr. Deperno is that she knows of several people who have seen him and then gotten married.

Emily is very much like many of the quintessential single-in-the-city heroines who saturate the plots of recent trendy “chick-lit” novels. She’s almost thirty and on the fast track in her PR profession; she’s a self-professed “SSW - single, successful woman.” The only thing missing is the single, successful man with whom to share it all. Emily reminds me of a Bridget Jones except Emily has more money. And she would definitely fit in with Sex & the City‘s Carrie Bradshaw’s gaggle of girlfriends discussing the ups and downs of dating in the big city.

Despite the fact that this particular plot has been dealt with in Helen Fielding’sBridget Jones’s Diary and Melissa Senate’s See Jane Date (both of which were later produced for film and television, respectively) and despite some clunky dialogue (like “He treats me like I am a Dairy Queen soft-serve on a hot summer day” and “I can and will not stop myself form eating the concrete of life”), the novel is a light, fun read.

The visits to her therapist allow us to delve into Emily’s past relationships and question whether each “flutter, flutter” she feels is for Mr. Right … or Mr. Wrong. The list of Mr. Wrongs include: the president of the PR company who Emily falls for as a young up-and-coming executive; the control-freak she meets while on an island vacation with her mother; the straight-gay guy; and a Major League baseball player, among other men. The one thing all of these men have in common? Emily felt the “flutter, flutter” in her stomach when she saw them.

Dr. Deperno suggests that she come up with a list of ten reasons why each relationship failed. The list serves the purpose of discovering if patterns exist in her relationship choices (and conjures up the spirit of all the The Rules books, a definite minus). Some of her discoveries are trite—“If his age is old enough to notice, it’s old enough to matter”—but they work in the plastic, Hollywood world in which Emily inhabits. They help her to learn about herself. She is self-aware enough to recognize where she goes wrong. However, what she needs to do now is correct the behavior.

To be sure, Emily is a drama queen about many things. In another story, she could easily turn into a caricature—and she threatens to be one at one point. When the man she feels is “The One” for her suddenly calls off the relationship, she takes to hiring a PI to follow him. This particular occurrence in the story is unfortunate. It sets up Emily as an irrational person. Gerlach’s Emily is supposed to be the hip, every woman therefore Emily’s actions presume to speak for the hip, every woman. Rather than use the company of her friends to get out her anger and frustration and sadness, she goes the clichéd and overly dramatic route. The novel could have done without this plot point. It nearly dragged down what is likeable about Emily: No matter what happens to her, she still holds a glimmer of hope that things will get better.

While Emily’s Reason’s Why Not is not as good as Bridget Jones’s Diary, it is infinitely better than See Jane Date. By the end of the novel, Emily has made some strides towards understanding her life and relationships as they relate to men. Because she’s taken an emotional inventory of all the men she’s known in her life, she knows what’s good for her. All she needs to do now is listen to her initial instincts … something that we know will be difficult for her because ultimately she is a character with human flaws.