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3.18 AVERAGE
3.18 AVERAGE
While I was reading this book, I asked myself a question that I read somewhere: Why has this book received so much acclaim? And why has it done so when so many books on similar subjects - the romantic misadventures of New Yorkers - are derided as chick lit? Could it be just because the author has a literary pedigree, or just because the narrator is male? I was prepared to answer that last question in the affirmative, and to dismiss the book as an undeserving darling of the critical press.
I was pleasantly surprised. This book is actually very good. Not 5-stars, turn-your-world-over good. But worth reading, easily; worth staying up late to finish; worth gifting to a friend. It's good first and foremost because it's enjoyable (this is always my first criteria for fiction): while I was reading it, I wanted to be reading it, and while I wasn't reading it, I often wanted to be reading it as well.
It was also interesting in a literary sense, not because the characters are all angsty Brooklyn literary types, but because:
- The author is female and the narrator is male. Yeah, sure, obvious. But also somewhat rare, and interesting to see. Waldman draws her narrator so dead-on, brings us so close to his thoughts and their skittish improximity to his feelings, that I had to keep reminding myself that this was not a man, it was what a woman thought of a man. A woman who'd probably read a lot of early Nick Hornby.
- The narrator is highly self-conscious. Unappealing in person, but interesting in a book. Especially in contrast to the endlessly naive female protagonists of many Women's Books About Love, who meet the guy they're going to end up with on page 5, break up with their boyfriend on page 250, get together with the first guy on page 260, and ride off into the sunset on page 265. This narrator is actually smart, if life if not about himself, and he makes the kind of mistakes real people make.
- The writing is smart and incisive and observant. Mostly about things like cocktail parties of people who have spent too much time in grad school, but smart writing is smart writing.
- Like in life, there are (spoiler) no happy endings here. At the end of the book, some things are better than at the beginning, and some things are worse. Nothing, though, has fundamentally changed. And while this is not necessarily a strength in itself, it frees the author from the machinations of a plot with a goal. Her characters don't need to find their soulmates or outgrow their neuroses; and, like real people, in the course of a few months most of them don't. But the ride the book takes us on is more interesting than most of the predictable epiphanies of comfort fiction, and only threatening if you're a man, or a woman, or if you live in Brooklyn.
I was pleasantly surprised. This book is actually very good. Not 5-stars, turn-your-world-over good. But worth reading, easily; worth staying up late to finish; worth gifting to a friend. It's good first and foremost because it's enjoyable (this is always my first criteria for fiction): while I was reading it, I wanted to be reading it, and while I wasn't reading it, I often wanted to be reading it as well.
It was also interesting in a literary sense, not because the characters are all angsty Brooklyn literary types, but because:
- The author is female and the narrator is male. Yeah, sure, obvious. But also somewhat rare, and interesting to see. Waldman draws her narrator so dead-on, brings us so close to his thoughts and their skittish improximity to his feelings, that I had to keep reminding myself that this was not a man, it was what a woman thought of a man. A woman who'd probably read a lot of early Nick Hornby.
- The narrator is highly self-conscious. Unappealing in person, but interesting in a book. Especially in contrast to the endlessly naive female protagonists of many Women's Books About Love, who meet the guy they're going to end up with on page 5, break up with their boyfriend on page 250, get together with the first guy on page 260, and ride off into the sunset on page 265. This narrator is actually smart, if life if not about himself, and he makes the kind of mistakes real people make.
- The writing is smart and incisive and observant. Mostly about things like cocktail parties of people who have spent too much time in grad school, but smart writing is smart writing.
- Like in life, there are (spoiler) no happy endings here. At the end of the book, some things are better than at the beginning, and some things are worse. Nothing, though, has fundamentally changed. And while this is not necessarily a strength in itself, it frees the author from the machinations of a plot with a goal. Her characters don't need to find their soulmates or outgrow their neuroses; and, like real people, in the course of a few months most of them don't. But the ride the book takes us on is more interesting than most of the predictable epiphanies of comfort fiction, and only threatening if you're a man, or a woman, or if you live in Brooklyn.
I think I enjoyed this in the same way that I enjoy people-watching. Waldman does an exceptional job portraying a young man who is very frustrating, very flawed, but also very real. I could see some major resemblances to men I've known in a lot of Nate's behavior, and that made it all the more interesting. Several reviewers have pointed out that Waldman doesn't provide a lot of plot; the novel is more about seeing snippets of conversations and relationship development. It's like being a fly on the wall, so to speak. It also seems that some reviewers were frustrated by the ending, but it felt realistic to me--if slightly disappointing.
Considering this is a contemporary novel about white Americans my age, this is about as far from my experience as it gets. I found the main character despicable, overall. But Waldman does a fantastic job of making me understand the motivation and internal conflicts Nate experiences. I read primarily to better understand other people, and this book satisfies that. Also, it makes me glad to be happily married.
Very difficult to get through towards the end. Usually I enjoy unapologetic narrators but I found Nathaniel hard to listen to.
This book was so spot-on, hence the stars. But it really pissed me off.
I give audiobooks a full disc to decide if they're worth it or not. I gave this one two discs just in case it was off to a slow start. What I got from those discs: Nate is way less interesting and desirable than he keeps trying to make everyone think. I just couldn't care about anything this character said and the book wasn't really going anywhere.
An ok, entertaining enough read. I wonder how this character would have been filtered or interpreted differently by a male author. I come away from this story with my notions and experiences confirmed about men of the young (ish) dating age, and I wonder if that is because the character and story was written by a woman. In the beginning, I was expecting to think that Nate was a total d-bag right off the bat, but I didn't feel that way. My dislike for him grew over the course of the book. By the end, I was thoroughly annoyed that It just bothered me. Overall, the story had a lot of problems for my taste, but I was still entertained by it.
Spoiler
he was with Greer for so much longer than Hannah, yet still seemed to not actually be invested, in love, or anything other than indifferent to who she was. Especially since Greer was a character of almost mystical, unattainable, poster-child like presence throughout the book.
3.5 ish... I ended up being engaged enough to finish, almost more to get to 35 books than to see where the story led.
I don't know how the author did it, but I wasn't able to put this book down, despite it not being a typical page-turner. I guess the characters were interesting enough that I wanted to know what would happen to them. I definitely enjoyed Waldman's writing style, which is easy to read and quite perceptive about people's characters in a somewhat surprising way. I do feel like the narrator of the book was not very likable, but of course that doesn't mean the book isn't good.
Initially I went along with it. It was funny in parts, but then about halfway through I found myself wondering why the hell I was reading it. Three quarters along I found it boring. And the abrupt end left me cold. It's a cold book.