Customer Reviews

I Know You're Out There: Private Longings, Public Humiliations, and Other Tales from the Personals

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Beaumier draws upon his experience editing personals at the Chicago Reader to write this collection of tales from both his experiences with the "advertisers" who place personal ads as well as from his own love life.

He's done the job long enough to have a collection of great stories, and it's a definite treat each time we meet one of the many characters from his daily work. While there are certainly the raving eccentrics and the overbearing creeps one would expect, there are just as many lovable and all-too-human characters in this story. Beaumier presents them all with a fair degree of respect and care, and they provide this book's best moments. Even if you've never read or placed a personal ad, you can't help but empathize with (or laugh at) many of these stories.

The author runs into trouble though when he strays too far from these characters, which happens all too often. His writing on his own relationships is workmanlike, but really lacks anything significant to the stereotypical mid-life doldrums many relationships suffer. We get the requisite soiree spats and family history, but it's pedestrian in both content and craft, certainly in comparison to the passages about his "advertisers." We live in an age of memoirs, and if you don't have an extraordinary life story, you should have something extraordinary to write about it. Beaumier simply doesn't seem to have much of either. While those portions are dull at most, the worst comes when he ruminates on the nature of love itself. Many great writers of both poetry and prose have faltered on this one, and Beaumier spends much time rehashing the mystery and the true nature of love without doing more than an occasionally passable job.

Is this book worth a purchase? Probably not, but it's certainly worth a borrow, as there are some truly inspired moments. It's a shame though that they're fairly few and far between.

I enjoyed reading this book and have suggested it to several of my single friends. It offered a very special insight into the world of personal ads and the love life of the author. The tone of the first half of the story and the second are very different. The first more contemplative (I nearly stopped reading it); the second half is more lively, filled with more examples of the personal ads and is slightly cynical. I wished the entire book was more like the second half.

Having been a reader of The Reader and automatically going to the personals to see who wants to screw who or however. Wagers are made between myself and a friend to see how many guys in the M seeking M section will be closeted MWM w/ children from the northwest burbs who need to keep it on the DL. This book was like going to see the wizard.

A very revealing look into this guy's job and his life. If a book can make me laugh out loud or cry when I'm on public transportation it's a good read. This book did this to me. In particular the chapter's "Sixes and Sevens" which had me tearing up then laughing in the chapter's ending paragraphs. Those inappropriate jokes following a buried skeleton, unearthed, that only a family can share is something I think many can relate to. Then "Emergency Powers" with one of the best quotes ever from a woman named Estelle. After finishing the last line of the chapter a woman next to me asked if I was okay. I admit it, I teared up a little.

I loved the book and if you buy it, you will too.

This book is HILARIOUS and poignant. I loved it! My preferred reading position for all save the driest of textbooks is flat on my back on the couch, which is where I planted myself to explore this book. Not only could I not put it down until I finished, but I had to get up and walk around the house several times to relieve the coughing spasms I had from laughing too hard too long in a prone position. I so needed the laughter offered by this wonderful book as my life has been filled with grief and loss of late. I am deeply grateful and still chuckle when snippets drift back through my conscious mind. My only problem is that I cannot decide which is my favorite... the poignant or the hilarious--it's a toss-up. You will have to read and decide for yourself.

These days you can't watch TV without seeing a commercial for online dating. Every 30 seconds Eharmony or Match.com urges that "it's okay to look" and promises that your next love connection is but a click away. But before Match.com facilitated stalking there was another way for lonely singles to connect: the personals section of the newspaper. Michael Beaumier still reads the personals every single day, not because he doesn't have Internet access or he's single (although he is) but because it's his job, he's the editor of personal ads for the Chicago Reader. He hears, edits and prepares personal ads for the singles of his city and watches as their love lives take off, falter, and crash and burn, and now so can you. In his collection of stories about working at the personals with such "nut jobs" as the woman who is cheating on her husband but irritated that the men she dates want to sleep with her and a young man so shy he is unable to talk to women you'll find humor, an observant eye, and the understanding that comes from seeing hundreds of people continue their search for love week after week. I Know You're Out There makes us laugh as we see the struggle, humor and utter humanity of the people trying to find love in the personals section, and also of the people working there. But Beaumier doesn't parade his clients as sideshow freaks, even though a woman looking to hypnotize guys is hard to describe in other words, he instead brings out their humanity and shares the universal struggle to find love in a lonely world. He also describes his own tumultuous relationship with "the boyfriend," stories about his family and for those of you looking to place an ad a translator for what words really mean (fyi: adventurous means slutty; fun means annoying). Part memoir, part non-fiction this book explores the age-old quest for love and says, it's okay to look while admitting that looking doesn't always mean finding. "My last great love affair didn't work out--many don't, but maybe the next one might, and if not, maybe the one after that. There may not be someone for everyone; there may not be a God in heaven, or peace on earth either. But that doesn't mean you just sit around at home, doing nothing." Without sappiness but with plenty of humor and honest Beaumier admits our innate desire to find "the one" and shares the often tricky, usually embarrassing road that such a journey takes us on.

Gentle, funny insight on the world
of a personal ads editor.
Many humorous tales.
A quick, easy read.

Highly entertaining with consistently sharp prose fitting the book's subject matter. A good, fun read about two of life's universally driving forces: finding love and coping with love, wherever found. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

For a guy with so much great material to draw on, this book was disappointing. It wasn't so much about an inside view of the personals as a memoir of a few years in his life. He should have stuck to the personals.

I have to echo what the other reviewer wrote. Lots of laughter and at the same time touching passages which are anything but sappy. Michael Beaumier's approach is dry, insightful and witty. Also, having used internet dating as of late, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to laugh with Beaumier about the absurdity which is ever present in that world.

I was disappointed to read in a review just after ordering the book-that the author said it was not non-fiction! As an avid reader of the Reader personal column here in Chicago, and O.K., maybe once or twice an actual participant, I was disappointed he didn't report the real stories.