Single and 50: Truthful, but how nakedly honest?

WHEN it comes to dating, Jane Ganahl brings some baggage.

In “Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife,” she portrays herself as a neurotic, overweight, “borderline frumpy redhead” who lives with three cats, harbors an adolescent obsession with rock stars, and struggles with loneliness.

“Maybe it’s harder for me to accept being suitor-free after having so many for the first forty-five years of my forty-nine on the planet,” Ganahl laments. “Is this the penalty for being a tart: lots of stories but no love?”

She’s also a single mom and a determined romantic plodding on in search of her astrologically perfect soul mate, her Leo, “the species artisticus humanitas -- the enlightened, not crazy, creative guy who is not about money, no. But successful enough to be able to afford a weekend in Mendocino.”

Ganahl’s grim quest inspired an editor at the San Francisco Chronicle to give her a column, “Single-Minded,” in which she wrote a cringingly frank account of her often frustrating social life for five years.

The book’s title promises a straightforward memoir. Promotional material accompanying the book is even more specific about its verisimilitude, describing it as “an intimate and uproarious look at one year in [Ganahl’s] single life, starting with the launch of her column and ending with her 50th birthday.”

Ganahl certainly plays it real. A reporter for 20 years, she understands that scrupulous detail conveys authenticity. And she sugarcoats nothing. She regrets not being a better mother, struggles through the death of family and friends, and confronts her own health crises.

But while dating provides material for her column, it doesn’t bring her much happiness.

Take the manipulative Lenny, a musician who expects her always to be at his beck and call, but leaves her feeling “physically pummeled and emotionally unsatisfied.”

She is surprisingly vulnerable to men’s adolescent whims, as when she has sex with Lenny in his car and gives in to another man who pressures her into using Ecstasy. This episode leads to sex that she can’t remember and to her being inadvertently locked out of her apartment without her clothes.

It would all be funny if it weren’t true. Then again, maybe it isn’t.

Ganahl reveals in her acknowledgments that it is a “novelized memoir” in which she stitches “together a heap of stories -- most the God’s truth, some closer to fiction.... Some scenes were fictionalized to suit my purposes, others scrupulously true-to-life, still others a combination of places and things I really did with things I wish I’d done.”

This admission leaves the reader feeling a bit like Ganahl waking up the morning after one of her bad dates: abused, confused, and wondering about the motives of the person lying next to him or her. But then again, does anyone tell the truth about dating?

One suspects Ganahl’s elastic definition of a memoir is a marketing ploy to distinguish her book from the hugely popular “Sex and the City” by Candace Bushnell and the “Bridget Jones” series by Helen Fielding.

After all, Ganahl’s book has much in common with the previous two. They all evolved from newspaper columns and are part of a popular genre that might be called “date lit,” a humorous collection of anecdotes about a single white urban female’s search for love. All three books’ central characters work in the media and are diarists, modern, female Samuel Pepyses recording not only their romantic entanglements, but also those of their diverse and diverting gay and gal pals.

The difference is that neither Bushnell nor Fielding marketed their work as memoir. Ganahl doesn’t use a fictional heroine to tell a diverting tale. Instead, she presents her struggle with middle age, conflicts over family and career, and humiliating romantic encounters as factual events that happened to her. This has the intended effect of adding pathos and meaning to what she describes.

That she corrects the intentional misdirection in the acknowledgments only makes her dodge seem cynical. She is certainly aware of how closely her book follows the path of Fielding and Bushnell; indeed, she cites Fielding’s work several times, and her promotional material contains a supportive blurb from Bushnell. Trying to pass off a work of fiction as factual may distinguish a book from a crowded field. But it can leave the unwary reader hating himself in the morning.

It’s a shame Ganahl didn’t have more confidence in herself. She didn’t need to make up anything. Her perspective is fresh and brave enough as it is. In this youth-obsessed age, it is inspiring to read an experienced woman admit that age has not brought wisdom, maturity or definitive answers to the questions posed by love and life.

Indeed, Ganahl is at her best when she embraces the very real and understandable contradictions inherent in being an unmarried, unattached, older woman.

“Who am I kidding? No matter how glorious it is being single -- most of the time -- I do believe that human beings are genetically programmed to want to pair up. Our quest for bonding makes us do stupid, inappropriate things, alter our standards, backslide on our beliefs.”

It takes courage to tell such truths. Ganahl would’ve done well to remember that one of the basic rules of successful dating also applies to good writing: Don’t try so hard.

Jonathan Shapiro is a Los Angeles-based television writer and producer.