Dated

Dated is a contemporary comic-social novel about Sophie Gabelman, a young Jewish progressive communications worker in New York, and her grandmother Irene Gabelman, an elderly Jewish widow in North Carolina who becomes obsessed with finding Sophie a Jewish husband. It tries to combine political satire, dating comedy, family novel, Jewish identity drama, post-October-7 moral crisis, social-media farce, and multigenerational loneliness. The ambition is clear, but the result is often overstuffed, too topical, and too eager to turn every scene into a thesis about contemporary life.

Sophie begins as an idealist who believes she is the kind of person who intervenes. She works in communications for Geraldo “G.T.” Torrino, the progressive mayor of New York City, a charismatic politician associated with universal healthcare, free buses, labor rights, social media savvy and future presidential ambition. Sophie and her colleague Yemi came up through the campaign world and still half-believe in the mission, though the office itself is already a depressing machine of memos, optics, content and compromise.

The major pressure on Sophie is Gaza. She is Jewish, horrified by Israel’s assault, and increasingly disgusted by the mayor’s refusal to say anything morally adequate. Her boss Amy, also Jewish, keeps insisting that Sophie needs to be realistic. Amy is the pragmatic operative: she agrees privately that suffering is terrible, but she sees every statement through optics, backlash, donors, Jewish communal politics and electoral calculation. Sophie wants the mayor to call for a ceasefire or at least show real compassion for Palestinian civilians. Amy tells her, again and again, that politics is not the place for purity.