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3.18 AVERAGE
3.18 AVERAGE
I wish I could give this more stars. It's very well written, which I suppose is why I kept reading it, but the story isn't all that interesting (an immature stereotypical New York writer treats a lot of women in stereotypical ways). It's kind of a modern version of _Bright Lights, Big City_, I suppose, except New York in the 10's isn't nearly as interesting as New York in the 80's, and neither are its young male authors. Or at least that's what I get out of the book.
For the first quarter, I thought I was going to quite enjoy this book, but then it became apparent that absolutely nothing was going to happen. He dates Hannah, treats her badly, and then starts dating Greer (which serves him right). In between, he eats out a lot, meets up with his friends, comments on the appearance of every woman who crosses his path and is generally completely self-absorbed.
I gather a lot of the attention this book received was due to the fact that it was written by a woman, but really, who cares who wrote it - it was not very interesting.
I gather a lot of the attention this book received was due to the fact that it was written by a woman, but really, who cares who wrote it - it was not very interesting.
*Sigh* I did not really enjoy this book. The main character is kind of a jerk - though he's intelligent, so it makes him question what's causing him to be a jerk, even as he is one. However, it had enough thought-provoking concepts and quotes about men vs. women approaches to relationships and dating in the 21st century that I begrudgingly give this a 3-star rating. Don't get me wrong: it's a well written book - I just don't enjoy character-driven books as much when the characters inherently annoy me.
My favorite quote from the book sums up my feelings about it: "I feel like you want to think what you're feeling is really deep, like seriously profound existential shit. But to me, it looks like the most tired, the most average thing in the world..."
My favorite quote from the book sums up my feelings about it: "I feel like you want to think what you're feeling is really deep, like seriously profound existential shit. But to me, it looks like the most tired, the most average thing in the world..."
This novel is supposed to be about a "glimpse into one man's mind and how he really thinks about women, sex and love"...Huh.
The beginning of the novel if not promising was good, but boy! afterward it was such a downfall!
Even though it's written by a women, the author seems to hate women!
Nate is a selfish, pretentious, superficial, misogynistic, mean, and wanna-be "intellectual" asshole hiding behind the helpless-nice-guy wall. The way he sees women made me cringed more than once if not all the time.
When he sees a woman the first thing he'll notice is a part of her body which is "fuckable",and he is obsessed with women being skinny.
The worst was the way sex overshadowed everything else; the fact that he's a writer, how it is difficult to get publish, how nowdays people do not really seem to care about books, literature. He wasn't in a relationship with women he was "fucking them", "getting laid", "sleeping with them" or they were "getting down on hi"m. Sex with the women he dated seemed like nothing more to him than porn. Always comparing the women he dated with a porn video he had seen or how different it was different from that video... Jeez I didn't know that he intended on becoming a pornographer. And the way he talked about sex sounded most of the time out of place, as if the author was trying too hard to show how a guy perceive sex nowdays.
The depiction of women were...bad totally bad except perhaps Hanna. Aurit was too smart for her own good and if Nate stayed friend with her it's becaus he knows he's not going to sleep with her, Geer, stupid even though she's "outspoken", drama queen and on the slutty side. Elisa a manipulative, spoiled girl who's used to get everything her way. Kristen too rational and pragmatic to really know what a romantic relatioship is supposed to be.
Only Hanna offered a glimpse of complexity.
The beginning of the novel if not promising was good, but boy! afterward it was such a downfall!
Even though it's written by a women, the author seems to hate women!
Nate is a selfish, pretentious, superficial, misogynistic, mean, and wanna-be "intellectual" asshole hiding behind the helpless-nice-guy wall. The way he sees women made me cringed more than once if not all the time.
When he sees a woman the first thing he'll notice is a part of her body which is "fuckable",and he is obsessed with women being skinny.
The worst was the way sex overshadowed everything else; the fact that he's a writer, how it is difficult to get publish, how nowdays people do not really seem to care about books, literature. He wasn't in a relationship with women he was "fucking them", "getting laid", "sleeping with them" or they were "getting down on hi"m. Sex with the women he dated seemed like nothing more to him than porn. Always comparing the women he dated with a porn video he had seen or how different it was different from that video... Jeez I didn't know that he intended on becoming a pornographer. And the way he talked about sex sounded most of the time out of place, as if the author was trying too hard to show how a guy perceive sex nowdays.
The depiction of women were...bad totally bad except perhaps Hanna. Aurit was too smart for her own good and if Nate stayed friend with her it's becaus he knows he's not going to sleep with her, Geer, stupid even though she's "outspoken", drama queen and on the slutty side. Elisa a manipulative, spoiled girl who's used to get everything her way. Kristen too rational and pragmatic to really know what a romantic relatioship is supposed to be.
Only Hanna offered a glimpse of complexity.
This is advertised as a comedy of manners. Lies. This is a horror book, through and through. And a very good one at that.
Adelle Waldman deserves five stars for The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. on the strength alone of her use of someone's reaction to Proust to so succinctly describe them. Here the target is one of the protagonist's former girlfriends, a semi-sickeningly wholesome type: "At home, he'd read Kristen bits from Proust, and she'd get this pinched look on her face, as if the sheer extravagance of Proust's prose was morally objectionable, as if there were children in Africa who could have better used those excess words."
I did, however, think briefly about giving the book a lower rating, mostly because I didn't altogether care for the main character, Nate. At times I envied him, with his intellect and his assured pursuit of writing. I even related to him, as was the occasion when I read this and thought of my own husband and his flair for the dramatic: "...it was not always unpleasant to deal with a hysterical woman. One feels so thoroughly righteous in comparison." But still, I didn't particularly like Nate.
Of course to punish the writer for this is unfair. Her job is, after all, not to make me feel good, but to make me feel. This she does skillfully, also creating what seemed to me a perfectly authentic, if insular world of an early thirty-something, terribly serious writer in Brooklyn.
I did, however, think briefly about giving the book a lower rating, mostly because I didn't altogether care for the main character, Nate. At times I envied him, with his intellect and his assured pursuit of writing. I even related to him, as was the occasion when I read this and thought of my own husband and his flair for the dramatic: "...it was not always unpleasant to deal with a hysterical woman. One feels so thoroughly righteous in comparison." But still, I didn't particularly like Nate.
Of course to punish the writer for this is unfair. Her job is, after all, not to make me feel good, but to make me feel. This she does skillfully, also creating what seemed to me a perfectly authentic, if insular world of an early thirty-something, terribly serious writer in Brooklyn.
When I first started reading Adelle Waldman’s debut novel The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, my first thoughts were that this is Sex in the City from a male perspective. To some extent my first impressions weren’t far off, that is not to say this isn’t a great novel. If you want a modern novel about the dating world then this is the one for you. Nate Piven is a Brooklynite about to blast into the literary scene; that is to say, his novel is about to be published and in his circles that is all that matters.
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P is a study into the dating life of, you guessed it, Nate Piven. He is a pretentious misogynist asshole, with a terrible track record when it comes to women. Nate suddenly finds himself with options; his gorgeous ex-girlfriend, a business reporter and a smart, intelligent nice girl. You can probably guess how this novel plays out; Waldman’s plot is far from perfect and sometimes predicable but that is not the reason to read her book in the first place.
The novel is an exploration into the modern dating world as well as a glimpse into the New York literary scene. Adelle Waldman does an amazing job exploring the dating scene and the modern man. She gets the male voice almost perfect, a little clichéd but maybe that is just how man are. I can’t help but get frustrated at Nate, I found myself wanting to yell, “Use your words” at the page multiple times. It can be infuriating to see all the stupid mistakes he keeps making but the journey makes for a great novel.
I don’t want to be picky but the characters in The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P were predominantly white and that felt like a bit of a problem. I always think of New York City as a diverse city, the literary world may not be as diverse but there is diversity in it, however this felt more like the TV representation of New York. In fact this novel felt so much like it was written in the hopes that it could be converted into a TV show or movie, I almost expected there to be a ‘token black guy’. I don’t think it would have taken much effort to add some diversity into the novel; I would have been happy if they mentioned one character being African American, Asian American or anything just to add a touch of multiculturalism into the book. I don’t know why I care about the diversity in this novel more than others; I think I enjoyed it so much I was just looking for flaws.
Reading about the dating life of Nate, you get a sense of his psychology. His attitude towards women, his complicated relationship with his parents, his fear of commitment and his complacency in a relationship; it all felt so real. The kind of thoughts that I remember having when I was younger, the modern men’s struggles to get their lives together, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P seemed to really get this right.
Despite the flaws in the novel, I was really impressed; Adelle Waldman’s debut novel really got the modern dating world right. Well, I’m old and married now but it was how I imagine it would be like out there for a single person. Nate’s friend Aurit’s got it right, “We might as well be on fucking Sex and the City”. I’m sure a younger person might compare this novel to something like Girls but if you are looking for a novel about dating you should check out The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. I especially enjoyed all the bookish conversations in this novel, which always makes a novel better.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2014/05/23/the-love-affairs-of-nathaniel-p-by-adelle-waldman/
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P is a study into the dating life of, you guessed it, Nate Piven. He is a pretentious misogynist asshole, with a terrible track record when it comes to women. Nate suddenly finds himself with options; his gorgeous ex-girlfriend, a business reporter and a smart, intelligent nice girl. You can probably guess how this novel plays out; Waldman’s plot is far from perfect and sometimes predicable but that is not the reason to read her book in the first place.
The novel is an exploration into the modern dating world as well as a glimpse into the New York literary scene. Adelle Waldman does an amazing job exploring the dating scene and the modern man. She gets the male voice almost perfect, a little clichéd but maybe that is just how man are. I can’t help but get frustrated at Nate, I found myself wanting to yell, “Use your words” at the page multiple times. It can be infuriating to see all the stupid mistakes he keeps making but the journey makes for a great novel.
I don’t want to be picky but the characters in The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P were predominantly white and that felt like a bit of a problem. I always think of New York City as a diverse city, the literary world may not be as diverse but there is diversity in it, however this felt more like the TV representation of New York. In fact this novel felt so much like it was written in the hopes that it could be converted into a TV show or movie, I almost expected there to be a ‘token black guy’. I don’t think it would have taken much effort to add some diversity into the novel; I would have been happy if they mentioned one character being African American, Asian American or anything just to add a touch of multiculturalism into the book. I don’t know why I care about the diversity in this novel more than others; I think I enjoyed it so much I was just looking for flaws.
Reading about the dating life of Nate, you get a sense of his psychology. His attitude towards women, his complicated relationship with his parents, his fear of commitment and his complacency in a relationship; it all felt so real. The kind of thoughts that I remember having when I was younger, the modern men’s struggles to get their lives together, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P seemed to really get this right.
Despite the flaws in the novel, I was really impressed; Adelle Waldman’s debut novel really got the modern dating world right. Well, I’m old and married now but it was how I imagine it would be like out there for a single person. Nate’s friend Aurit’s got it right, “We might as well be on fucking Sex and the City”. I’m sure a younger person might compare this novel to something like Girls but if you are looking for a novel about dating you should check out The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. I especially enjoyed all the bookish conversations in this novel, which always makes a novel better.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2014/05/23/the-love-affairs-of-nathaniel-p-by-adelle-waldman/
If I wasn't so utterly convinced that this book was meant to be satirical, I would give it 1 star. And I think a lot of people did misinterpret this book. I did at first as well.
Nate is embodiment of all the fears women have about men. He is shallow, moody, and perpetually unhappy. Claiming to want this, but in actuality, really wants that. He criticizes girlfriends for unflattering jeans, a little arm "jiggle", for being too girly or not feminine enough. He is a fickle jerk, who consistently convinces himself that he feels SO MUCH but chickens out the moment the woman in his life asks for his feelings to be vocalized. He makes completely blanket statements about women and their intentions in careers, relationships and goals, but allows a pass to his equally douchy male friends who make the same overarching conclusions about the female gender. He will blatantly check out a woman in front of his SO, but becomes pissy when in that same conversation, the girlfriend tunes out when he starts talking about literature, and brings it up with a very "I'm a guy. That's what I do. But YOU? How dare you not listen to me when I'm speaking?!"
Nate is every asshole I dated between the ages of 18 to the present. He takes many of the worst qualities of my ex-boyfriends, and rolls them up into an equally intolerable ball of insecurity and narcissism.
This book was infuriating, but I think that was the point. As this book is coming from a female author, I can imagine it was written as a field guide of sorts. Ladies, Nate is a guy that you will date when you're looking for your partner, your ONE, your almost-ONE, whatever. In fact, you'll probably end up dating dozens of guys that exude the same self-centered, overly critical-of-you eye that Nate does. Hell, make these people more impoverished and lost (career wise), and this was my life at 22.
Pretty clearly from the way that the character makes me seethe every time he was "annoyed" that his girlfriend invited him to brunch, or how he hated the way she had throw pillows, or how his wandering mental eye made me uncomfortable at pretty much any point in the book is a clear show that Adelle Waldman is a talented writer. The book features more vignettes into a life more than an overarching story, but I feel like that might even be more true to how life is. Sometimes, relationships don't have a climax, and the resolution / end can be less then spectacular.
The only reason I'm not giving this book 5 stars is because it did almost TOO good of a job of making me hate Nate, that I can't bear to give his imaginary self the benefit of highest praise. (YES, THAT IS HOW MUCH OF A GIANT DICK THIS GUY IS)
As far as Waldman goes, I look forward to her next release. I know there is a sequel, which views the events of the book from the eyes of Aurit, the only woman in Nate's life that can stand him (mostly because she had the wherewithal to avoid anything romantic with him), but I don't know if I even want to look at this guy again. Nate is a character I am glad to leave behind, and one that I hope I won't have to encounter in my dating life again. He is pre-Millennial entitled masculine ass masquerading as a sensitive and profoundly deep soul. But as we can see from his internal monologue and the way he is painted by Waldman, that this is all a lie. And a damn good one.
Nate is embodiment of all the fears women have about men. He is shallow, moody, and perpetually unhappy. Claiming to want this, but in actuality, really wants that. He criticizes girlfriends for unflattering jeans, a little arm "jiggle", for being too girly or not feminine enough. He is a fickle jerk, who consistently convinces himself that he feels SO MUCH but chickens out the moment the woman in his life asks for his feelings to be vocalized. He makes completely blanket statements about women and their intentions in careers, relationships and goals, but allows a pass to his equally douchy male friends who make the same overarching conclusions about the female gender. He will blatantly check out a woman in front of his SO, but becomes pissy when in that same conversation, the girlfriend tunes out when he starts talking about literature, and brings it up with a very "I'm a guy. That's what I do. But YOU? How dare you not listen to me when I'm speaking?!"
Nate is every asshole I dated between the ages of 18 to the present. He takes many of the worst qualities of my ex-boyfriends, and rolls them up into an equally intolerable ball of insecurity and narcissism.
This book was infuriating, but I think that was the point. As this book is coming from a female author, I can imagine it was written as a field guide of sorts. Ladies, Nate is a guy that you will date when you're looking for your partner, your ONE, your almost-ONE, whatever. In fact, you'll probably end up dating dozens of guys that exude the same self-centered, overly critical-of-you eye that Nate does. Hell, make these people more impoverished and lost (career wise), and this was my life at 22.
Pretty clearly from the way that the character makes me seethe every time he was "annoyed" that his girlfriend invited him to brunch, or how he hated the way she had throw pillows, or how his wandering mental eye made me uncomfortable at pretty much any point in the book is a clear show that Adelle Waldman is a talented writer. The book features more vignettes into a life more than an overarching story, but I feel like that might even be more true to how life is. Sometimes, relationships don't have a climax, and the resolution / end can be less then spectacular.
The only reason I'm not giving this book 5 stars is because it did almost TOO good of a job of making me hate Nate, that I can't bear to give his imaginary self the benefit of highest praise. (YES, THAT IS HOW MUCH OF A GIANT DICK THIS GUY IS)
As far as Waldman goes, I look forward to her next release. I know there is a sequel, which views the events of the book from the eyes of Aurit, the only woman in Nate's life that can stand him (mostly because she had the wherewithal to avoid anything romantic with him), but I don't know if I even want to look at this guy again. Nate is a character I am glad to leave behind, and one that I hope I won't have to encounter in my dating life again. He is pre-Millennial entitled masculine ass masquerading as a sensitive and profoundly deep soul. But as we can see from his internal monologue and the way he is painted by Waldman, that this is all a lie. And a damn good one.
It's strange to say that I enjoyed this book because the titular character was absolutely the very worst. There was something so comforting and familiar in this though, reading about a shitty man who treats people badly and projects his own failings on to the women in his life, trying to mould them into what he thinks is his idea of the perfect woman. A man who thinks that because there's worse men out there, then he's one of the good guys, surely? As if the measure of how to treat human beings is just don't be as awful as the very worst of men. A frustrating read but man it was nice to just be disgusted by a character and feel like I'm actually supposed to be, for his own justifications of his behaviour to actually read as ridiculous as they are? I've read a lot of reviews of this that call it anti feminist but I don't agree, I really feel like it's absolutely a critique of men like Nate, we're not supposed to identify with him?
2.5 stars
One of those stories that is almost parody, but too realistic at the same time - it reminded me of Where'd You Go, Bernadette? in that way. For me, it almost makes me wonder if the author is always fully aware of the irony.
The main character in this is so insufferable - and he's supposed to be, and that's okay - but I had a hard time understanding why the other characters put up with his BS so much.
Also, cut it with the condescension re: Baltimore. (As I understand it, the author is from Baltimore, so .. really??!) That's just obnoxious. Everywhere doesn't need to be Brooklyn.
One of those stories that is almost parody, but too realistic at the same time - it reminded me of Where'd You Go, Bernadette? in that way. For me, it almost makes me wonder if the author is always fully aware of the irony.
The main character in this is so insufferable - and he's supposed to be, and that's okay - but I had a hard time understanding why the other characters put up with his BS so much.
Also, cut it with the condescension re: Baltimore. (As I understand it, the author is from Baltimore, so .. really??!) That's just obnoxious. Everywhere doesn't need to be Brooklyn.