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3.18 AVERAGE
3.18 AVERAGE
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Do not bother. 10:04 is leagues ahead this girl slop.
I hated this character so much it made it hard to enjoy the book.
I loved it. Yes, Nate is an asshole, that’s a given. But I felt like I got such a great male perspective. It helped explain behaviors of guys I’ve dated and had trouble understanding. I’m so impressed by Adelle Waldman’s writing, I’m interested in reading more of her work.
I really wanted to like this book, as I read so many good reviews about it. Maybe I missed a level of irony somewhere, but I found the "loveable antihero" very difficult to like, let alone love. The way he approached his life and relationships was frustrating, viewing people as belonging to one of two categories, with any non-stereotypical traits being treated as deviations from the mean, rather than individual characteristics. Maybe this is indeed how people think, and maybe this was the point of the book, but I still found myself rolling my eyes at this book more than enjoying it. The end almost made up for a lot of it but, unfortunately, the book overall was not as enjoyable as I had hoped it to be. I guess reading it made me feel a little bit like dating Nate made Hannah feel; patronised and frustrated.
I have to say, this is the most unromantic book surrounding love I’ve ever read. It was laughable how terribly arrogant the main character was, which made sympathizing with any of his actions very difficult. Not to mention, every. single. page. had some generalization about “women are annoying because of this” or “this is too girly because that” or “she is hot but she has her own thoughts that don’t relate to me” ….OH NO!!! Who could have seen that coming?!…. It seemed hard for Nate to understand that people have their own lives that don’t pertain to his or… even more of a shocker… a woman can talk to him because simply just that, she wants to talk about something. No romantic intentions, nothing about getting in his pants. For most of the book, I was left wondering why Nate, the same Nate who had sticky coffee pot droplets all over his apartment floor and ate frozen pizza daily, got the confidence to openly judge every breathing thing that passed him (no offense to frozen pizza).
I personally am not a writer living in New York, but even I know that there is NO way that the whole demographic speaks like that to one another. I found myself bored at times of the conversations and debates about this and that amongst his friends. It seemed like their noses were in each others ways at all times just to prove they were smarter than the other. It was hard to like his friends as well, since they all had a similar “everyone is wrong except me” attitude. I don’t even know if Nate liked his friends.
***SPOILERS BELOW***
The ending left me baffled. I felt like I was watching the last episode of How I Met Your Mother again, when I spent the WHOLE however many seasons waiting for some big reveal to happen, but instead experienced no resolution whatsoever. Even though I could force myself to sympathize with Nate’s concerns about his relationship with Hannah, I automatically gravitated to picking her side for most of their issues. By the end, I was at least relieved Hannah had gotten out of this situation in general, but couldn’t even be happy for her because the novel immediately moved onto yet another one of Nate’s toxic relationships without any indication of closure from Hannah.
My favorite parts of the book were when Hannah would call him out for being a condescending loser, and especially her last line in the post-breakup letter: “You’re really bad in bed.” PREACH, HANNAH!
Overall, I think the reader was somehow supposed to feel happy for Nate at the end? That was the most confusing of all… Am I supposed to be happy because this man (correction, BOY) is finally in somewhat of a longer relationship with some random girl I barely got to know at all? Or am I supposed to end with the moral of the story being that Nate’s small improvements will never heal the arrogant, surly, and patronizing 18 year old self stuck in his 30 year old body?
I personally am not a writer living in New York, but even I know that there is NO way that the whole demographic speaks like that to one another. I found myself bored at times of the conversations and debates about this and that amongst his friends. It seemed like their noses were in each others ways at all times just to prove they were smarter than the other. It was hard to like his friends as well, since they all had a similar “everyone is wrong except me” attitude. I don’t even know if Nate liked his friends.
***SPOILERS BELOW***
The ending left me baffled. I felt like I was watching the last episode of How I Met Your Mother again, when I spent the WHOLE however many seasons waiting for some big reveal to happen, but instead experienced no resolution whatsoever. Even though I could force myself to sympathize with Nate’s concerns about his relationship with Hannah, I automatically gravitated to picking her side for most of their issues. By the end, I was at least relieved Hannah had gotten out of this situation in general, but couldn’t even be happy for her because the novel immediately moved onto yet another one of Nate’s toxic relationships without any indication of closure from Hannah.
My favorite parts of the book were when Hannah would call him out for being a condescending loser, and especially her last line in the post-breakup letter: “You’re really bad in bed.” PREACH, HANNAH!
Overall, I think the reader was somehow supposed to feel happy for Nate at the end? That was the most confusing of all… Am I supposed to be happy because this man (correction, BOY) is finally in somewhat of a longer relationship with some random girl I barely got to know at all? Or am I supposed to end with the moral of the story being that Nate’s small improvements will never heal the arrogant, surly, and patronizing 18 year old self stuck in his 30 year old body?
Waldman's debut is as good, as funny, and as brutal as everyone says.
emotional
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
While not a literary classic, this is a perfectly fine little novel, a well-written character study with some wit, some turns of phrase, and enough plot to keep going from beginning to end. For the seemingly endless critics who find the main character some variety of loathsome, I only have complete puzzlement. He's a bit of a jerk, yes, but really no better or worse than a pretty substantial chunk of the entire population. Entitled at times, smarmy often, lazy and self-interested, sure, but we are all the protagonists of our own story and it seems ludicrous to pretend otherwise. If Nate really strikes someone as so bad, then I shudder to think what happens when they meet actual people...
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes