The national bestseller, named a best book of the year by
The New Yorker
,
NPR
Slate
The Economist
The New Republic
Bookforum
Baltimore City Paper
San Francisco Chronicle
Chicago Reader,
Cosmopolitan
Elle
, and many others. A
New York Times
Editors' Choice and a
Washington Post
Notable book.
A
bold debut novel by a brilliant young woman about the romantic life of a
brilliant
young literary man.
"Adelle Waldman's debut novel,
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
, scrutinizes Nate and the subculture that he thrives in with a patient, anthropological detachment. Ms. Waldman has sorted and cross-categorized the inhabitants of Nate's world with a witty, often breathtaking precision..."
—Maria Russo,
The New York Times
Writer Nate Piven's star is rising. After several lean and striving years, he has his pick of both magazine assignments and women: Juliet, the hotshot business reporter; Elisa, his gorgeous ex-girlfriend, now friend; and Hannah, "almost universally regarded as nice and smart, or smart and nice," who holds her own in conversation with his friends. When one relationship grows more serious, Nate is forced to consider what it is he really wants.
In Nate's 21st-century literary world, wit and conversation are not at all dead. Is romance?
Novelist Adelle Waldman plunges into the psyche of a flawed, sometimes infuriating modern man—one who thinks of himself as beyond superficial judgment, yet constantly struggles with his own status anxiety, who is drawn to women, yet has a habit of letting them down in ways that may just make him an emblem of our times. With tough-minded intelligence and wry good humor
is an absorbing tale of one young man's search for happiness—and an inside look at how he really thinks about women, sex and love.