Brief

A woman in her late 50s finds that she needs to start dating again after the end of her 25-year marriage. But now she needs to navigate the often terrible and confusing world of online dating. Online, she ends up befriending a misogynistic but comical pen pal who she belabors every one of her crazy dates to and he gives her advice. After many ups and downs, including deceptions, and mistakes, she finally meets someone and finds happiness.

What We Liked

The story is a very relatable story. Whether you are 20 or 60, being single and looking is really tough, especially in the age of online dating. Seeing others go through the trials and tribulations, weeding through profiles, getting rejections, going on insane, you-couldn’t-make-it-up-if-you-tried dates, is something so many people have gone through that it’s cathartic and enjoyable to live through the eyes of someone else.

Film: The book would make a good adaptation into a film because there is a clear beginning, middle, and end, and, because it has elements from other successful films that could be woven together in a tight narrative arc. Similar to Eat, Pray, Love, the lead starts out with a deadbeat, younger boyfriend after a divorce and having that end and needing to find her way. There is the anonymous and mysterious penpal component like in the You’ve Got Mail that can create a fun and intriguing will-they or won’t-they scenario that runs as a through-line throughout the short vignettes of bad date after bad date (which is the premise of so many TV shows and movies that it’s not worth trying to list them here). And in the end she meets someone, so the story has a satisfying and earned ending.

TV: Since the book is ultimately a vignette of bad and often dramatic dates, this could work well as an adaptation for TV where each episode is a date that is narrated by the lead through the context of an email to her penpal, following her through the trials and tribulations of the insanity of online dating.

Key points: Relatable story; Built-in audience ; Lots of comic relief; Shocking stories; Nutty characters

Synopsis

We meet JANIE as her relationship is ending with her crack addicted boyfriend, who has been using her and stealing from her, and ultimately leaves her for his crack dealer. This was the end of a yearlong relationship that she got herself into after the dissolution of her 25-year marriage. In her late 50s and single, Janie is looking to get into another relationship, and trying to figure out how to do that. After a few false starts through the church, she decides to bite the bullet and try online dating. She sends a message to a guy around her age that she finds attractive. Janie becomes extremely offended when he doesn’t respond and starts to obsessively berate him for not answering. When the man finally does answer, he tells her that he is looking for someone younger and that he has a “full plate,” which is the name he is called the rest of the story. Janie decides to make FULL PLATE her penpal, friend, and confidant, sending him messages about all the terrible online dates she’s enduring. FULL PLATE is also in his late 50s and divorced. He’s in a relationship now with SALT but is online looking for opportunities to cheat on her. The friendship begins to take hold, as he’ll respond in kind, sometimes with advice, sometimes with judgement, sometimes with apathy, and sometimes he’ll share something personal back.

Next come the barrage of terrible first dates both found online and sometimes at her local bar. There’s the younger guy with a Barbie fetish. The unemployed loser. The creepy guy who takes her onto his houseboat and says he doesn’t kiss on first dates but then tries to sleep with her. There was the man who sent her dick pics who she blocked and then randomly runs into at a bar a few days later. There was the blind date that ended up being a sob-fest where the man only talked about his ex. There was the guy that made her drive out to his house in the pouring rain and greeted her at his front door with a Horton-the-elephant stuffed animal that he demanded she speak to. The list goes on, and on, and on.

Throughout the bad dates Janie has heart-to-heart conversations with a group of her girlfriends, where they talk about everything from if size matters to how they end up with the men they end up with, lamenting about past relationships. And then Janie finally meets COLLIN, who, on paper, seems like a catch, with a PhD and a good job. We learn throughout this whole time, from her correspondence with Full Plate, that she had a nice childhood, and that she thought her dad was a really standup father and husband. She had a nice marriage and amicable separation from her husband of 25 years after he became more religious and she less-so. That she has three grown children. And that she’s trying to work through her insecurities and bad self-image. Also throughout, Full Plate often retorts with arrogant remarks. One that really gets to Janie is that he doesn’t need her advice because he has two beautiful blondes who are his confidants and help him evaluate the women he’s chatting with online.

Janie is so incensed by Full Plate’s comment that she decides to play a trick on him. She sends him the picture of a good friend of hers who is younger and lives far away, KATIE. Katie is beautiful and has large breasts, which is something Full Plate likes. He looks at the picture and says he’d be interested in talking to her. Janie gives him a phone number, but the phone number is actually Janie’s. They end up talking for hours every other day for a few months and it’s clear he’s really falling for “Katie.” Janie is worried she’s taken it too far and is afraid she’ll ruin the friendship if she comes clean. This comes to a head when he tells her that he’s falling in love with Katie. Janie’s relationship with Collin starts out intriguing. He takes her to a swingers sex club, where he used to swing with his ex. Janie is shocked by the whole scene of people having sex all around her and says that’s not something she’s into. They settle into a routine and she gets to know Collin’s son JEFFERY, who she becomes very fond of. However, over time, Collin becomes verbally abusive. Janie seeks out therapy to help her figure out how to get out of the relationship with Collin. When she tells Full Plate about what is going on, this is the first time Full Plate is sincerely caring towards Janie.

Janie feels more and more guilty about lying to Full Plate about Katie, but every time she gets ready to confess, he does something that annoys her and so she never does. She decides to have “Katie” ghost Full Plate and no longer answers his emails or calls as Katie, though still talks to him regularly as Janie. Full Plate obsessively asks Janie about what happened to Katie and why she disappeared. She thinks that maybe she can get him to be less interested if she tells him that Katie took out her breast implants, but he doesn’t buy that. Later, she tells him that Katie realized she was a lesbian and is actually in love with Janie. He doesn’t know what to make of this new information. Janie then gets devastating news that Collin’s son Jeremy has commit suicide not long after she had visited with him. His funeral is the last time she really talks to Collin. But this loss has made her think more deeply about the value of life and the time we have on Earth and thinks about other things she could do with her life.

Lamenting his loss and confusion about Katie, in their correspondence, Full Plate tells Janie exactly where he is going to be and when, though doesn’t explicitly invite her. She shows up at the bar where he is, ready to confront him and tell him the truth. But she decides that that’s not what she wants to do and leaves. At that point, she cuts off all communication with Full Plate. He writes and writes, but she never responds and never came clean about Katie. Later, she meets a couple from the original church group through her girl friend RITA, who she becomes very good friends with. After a few years, the man’s wife dies and Janie ends up marrying the widowed husband. And has been in a happy marriage with him since.

About The Author

Janie Cochran has written two novels, Romantic Disclosures and Mania. Romantic Disclosures is a memoir of her experiences with divorce, raising her three children, and trying to find love in the D.C. Metro area.