A debut novel by a brilliant young woman about the coming-of-age of a brilliant young literary man “Nate is so convincingly drawn you’ll want to hug him, lecture him and shake some sense into him simultaneously. Waldman has deftly written a laugh-out-loud treatise on why he didn’t call.” — Allison Amend, author of A Nearly Perfect Copy Nate Piven is a rising star in Brooklyn’s literary scene. 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” and who holds her own in conversation with his friends. But when one relationship grows more serious, Nate is forced to consider what it is he really wants. In this twenty-first-century literary world, wit and conversation are not at all dead. Is romance? Novelist Adelle Waldman plunges into the psyche of a modern man — 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. With tough-minded intelligence and wry good humor The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. 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.
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“A funny and surprisingly sympathetic examination of theromantic sociopathy of youthful litterateurs…Waldman captures smart-enoughliterary party patter so well…that many of her readers may find themselves squirmingin hot-faced recognition…Placed throughout the novel, however, are callbacks tothe social literature of the nineteenth century—to George Eliot’s work inparticular.”
— Harper’s
“The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. [is] a hilariously astute portrait of a hopelessly self-obsessed Brooklyn writer as a sad young literary man, a Peter Pan for a new, deeply ironic millennium.”
— Vogue“A thoroughly, hilariously of-the-moment tale that marvelously captures what it’s really like to be young, smart, and looking for love in the big city.”
— Elle“An honest look inside the head of thirtysomething Nate Piven. It’ll have you screaming because you’ve so dated this guy.”
— Glamour“[A] pitch-perfect debut…In the demure tradition of the comedy of manners, Ms. Waldman is rarely mocking or mean-spirited....A comic performance you shouldn't miss.”
— Wall Street Journal“A smart, engaging twenty-first-century comedy of manners in which the debut novelist Adelle Waldman crawls convincingly around inside the head of one Nathaniel (Nate) Piven.”
— New York Times Book Review“Reminiscent of classic realist novels from authors like Graham Greene or Henry James, this delightful debut jumps headfirst into the mind of one man, revealing what he really thinks about women, dating, and success.”
— BookPageBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Adelle Waldman is a graduate of Brown University and Columbia University’s journalism school. She worked as a reporter at the New Haven Register and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal’s website. Her articles also have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the New Republic, Slate, the Wall Street Journal, and other national publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.