Synopses & Reviews
English female, 30s, slim and attractive, seeks professional male for fun times.
Think you've seen and heard it all? London-based writer Rochelle Morton hooked up with a thousand men in eighteen months, and her blow-by-blow account of the experience is the most eye-opening and hilarious dispatch from the singles front since Bridget Jones cracked open her diary.
A bestselling author in the U.K., where her first book, Eat Your Lonely Heart Out, chronicled England's "lonely hearts" scene, Rochelle is no stranger to power dating. But the overwhelming response to this "slim, attractive English female" surprised even her; after placing just a single innocuously worded ad in six different American newspapers, she was inundated with more than two thousand recorded messages begging for a date. Using a highly scientific "meet one, delete one" winnowing process, she ultimately contacted a thousand would-be Romeos and recorded her interactions and meetings with each in meticulous detail.
Did she find true love amongst the slew of cheating husbands, Anglo-philes, bullies, lonely guys, and fetishists (foot, food, feline, and otherwise) who answered her ads? Are American men different from British men? Are there any nice guys out there anywhere? For anyone who has considered dipping a toe in the personals dating pool, My 1,000 Americans is required reading and proof positive that truth is stranger than fiction.
Review
"An experiment gone awry: a British writer places a lonely-hearts ad and embarks on an ambitious program of dating the respondents, apparently to learn something of the American male....Of the 100-odd American males from 20 to 70 who appear in this chronicle, only a few are anything but repulsive, although those few strive heroically to redeem their sex and nationality from charges of hopelessness. For her part, Morton plays the British sophisto card a few times too often, proudly remarking how stunningly attractive her accent is to her hapless American dates. Still, her narrative is an entertaining curiosity, if perhaps a pointless one except, that is, as a catalogue of male awfulness. That catalogue may be draw enough for some readers, who'll find their worst suspicions about every Tom, Dick, and Harry confirmed in Morton's pages." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"No stranger to the personal ads, Morton, who described her blind dates with more than 700 Englishmen in Eat Your Lonely Heart Out, decided to find out if 'men are men the whole world round,' and placed the same ad, 'English female, 30s, slim and attractive, seeks professional male for fun times,' in papers in Florida, Atlanta, Chicago and New York City....(Not surprisingly, the briefest chapter chronicles the handful of 'nice guys' who were actually interested in getting to know her.) Most women, particularly those fed up with the singles scene, will laugh at the men's blatant inappropriateness and Morton's witty and icy replies, yet her litany of puerile male behavior grows tedious and somewhat repetitive. Moreover, Morton's repeated indignation about all the 'lonely penises' she encounters seems less convincing after several hundred dates; one begins to wonder if she isn't a bit of a tease. Still, like her popular fictional compatriot Bridget Jones, Morton offers a lighthearted and ultimately optimistic diversion from sober, instructive dating books." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Born and raised in London, Rochelle Morton now divides her time between her hometown and Miami. She is currently single, but still looking and ever hopeful.