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ailsabristow 's review for:
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
by Adelle Waldman
So according the FULSOME praise on the book's dust jacket, Adelle Waldman is an incisive social commentator who has exploded the world of dating in today's Brooklyn and plumbed the depth of sensitive literary man's ego etc etc etc. One particularly adoring reviewer goes as far as to compare her to Jane Austen...
... which is not how I felt about this book. Look, its fine. Actually, its pretty readable, engaging, at times it borders on laugh out loud funny. I whirled my way through this book, and to give Walman her credit, she's a good writer. Waldman has some interesting things to say about how men and women behave in relationships, and I'm willing to skip over the lengthy sections in which the main character muses on the intellectual inferiority of women because I'm pretty sure these were sections where the author felt she was being particularly edgy, and deliberately trying to bait "humourless feminists." Nope, I'm totally willing to accept that your self-involved self-proclaimed postfeminist protagonist secretly does not actually respect women. It seems entirely in keeping with his character.
Mostly, I just don't know how many more novels about bored, privileged, upper-middle class, ivy-educated white people who have romantic problems I need to read. The fact that Nate feels guilt about his own easy life, that he himself questions whether he should be so entirely devoted to dissecting the minutae of his own life instead of actually participating in improving himself or the world doesn't stop me, as a reader, also finding him tedious. I mean, throughout my English literature degree I used to get annoyed at people who said they didn't like the book because they "couldn't relate" to the main character - but to be honest, it wasn't even that I particularly disliked Nate (if only!) but just that he was such a thoroughly perfect example of such an utterly boring type of person that by the end of the novel I just felt vaguely bored. This isn't particularly aided by the fact that the plot is pretty flimsy and nothing ever feels massively at stake (in either material or emotional terms). The novel takes us through a series of social engagements where Nate makes the kind of banal observations beloved of columnists everywhere (brunch is annoying! I hate gentrification of my previously ethnic neighbourhood even though I am self-evidently a part of the problem!) and nothing happens and nothing changes. Ultimately, I do not care a jot whether Nate will end up with cardboard cutout A or B, or blissfully on his own, contemplating his own literary genius.
... which is not how I felt about this book. Look, its fine. Actually, its pretty readable, engaging, at times it borders on laugh out loud funny. I whirled my way through this book, and to give Walman her credit, she's a good writer. Waldman has some interesting things to say about how men and women behave in relationships, and I'm willing to skip over the lengthy sections in which the main character muses on the intellectual inferiority of women because I'm pretty sure these were sections where the author felt she was being particularly edgy, and deliberately trying to bait "humourless feminists." Nope, I'm totally willing to accept that your self-involved self-proclaimed postfeminist protagonist secretly does not actually respect women. It seems entirely in keeping with his character.
Mostly, I just don't know how many more novels about bored, privileged, upper-middle class, ivy-educated white people who have romantic problems I need to read. The fact that Nate feels guilt about his own easy life, that he himself questions whether he should be so entirely devoted to dissecting the minutae of his own life instead of actually participating in improving himself or the world doesn't stop me, as a reader, also finding him tedious. I mean, throughout my English literature degree I used to get annoyed at people who said they didn't like the book because they "couldn't relate" to the main character - but to be honest, it wasn't even that I particularly disliked Nate (if only!) but just that he was such a thoroughly perfect example of such an utterly boring type of person that by the end of the novel I just felt vaguely bored. This isn't particularly aided by the fact that the plot is pretty flimsy and nothing ever feels massively at stake (in either material or emotional terms). The novel takes us through a series of social engagements where Nate makes the kind of banal observations beloved of columnists everywhere (brunch is annoying! I hate gentrification of my previously ethnic neighbourhood even though I am self-evidently a part of the problem!) and nothing happens and nothing changes. Ultimately, I do not care a jot whether Nate will end up with cardboard cutout A or B, or blissfully on his own, contemplating his own literary genius.