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ampersandread 's review for:
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
by Adelle Waldman
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This is what happens in Nathaniel P. : our acerbic narrator, Nate, dates a girl for a few months, and has many quibbling and tiresome "academic" fights with friends he doesn't seem to like very much. That's it. You think maybe you'll go back in time to revisit his past relationships, go over how he met them, what he learned from each girl. But apart from the occasional afternoon musing about an ex, you don't get to really hear about anybody but Nate.
And Nate is jerk (something more than a jerk, but I'm censoring it for goodreads). A really boring jerk.
I literally like every single other character better than Nate. And a lot of the other characters suck.
Let's go back up to that synopsis briefly. Nate is supposedly a "sensitive, modern man." Which is completely untrue. He's not sensitive in the least. He disparages all women in his life, painfully agonizes over mundane, archaic things about dating, women, relationships, none of which is new. Even worse is the thought that this book "reveals one particular (though also alarmingly familiar) young man’s thoughts about women and love." Which is technically true, only because it will be familiar to any woman who has ever dated a womanizing prick. Why is all this lauded as positive?! Without reading the book it might sound promising. After reading Love Affairs , it just points out what a terrible person and character Nate is.
So Nate spends 70% of the book trying to make his whinings about dating and relationships seem valid and worthwhile. The other 30% of the book is Nate interacting with friends at various restaurants or parties, and ALWAYS getting into random arguments about random philosophical/psychological/political topics they may or may not write articles about to sell for freelance gigs. Such as the export of labor as the height of capitalism. Or obesity. Or book reviews.
And seeing as there's no reason for me to care about these arguments: no common ground is struck, no argument is returned to or becomes a major plot point, and no one is ever in any danger of losing a gig or even suffering for money for some reason (probably because they all seem to have written a book for a huge advance - the plots and characters of which are treated as unimportant, inconsequential).
There's nothing for me to care about here. No actively stimulating plot. No stakes. Nate is a sexist, boring jerk who thinks he is Someone Important. Women tend to like him (who knows why), but he's bad at dating, he's selfish, and apart from his jerk-ness, doesn't have anything interesting going for him. I don't care is he gets a happy ending. Or even an unhappy ending. I would not recommend Nate or his boring, boorish story.
This is what happens in Nathaniel P. : our acerbic narrator, Nate, dates a girl for a few months, and has many quibbling and tiresome "academic" fights with friends he doesn't seem to like very much. That's it. You think maybe you'll go back in time to revisit his past relationships, go over how he met them, what he learned from each girl. But apart from the occasional afternoon musing about an ex, you don't get to really hear about anybody but Nate.
And Nate is jerk (something more than a jerk, but I'm censoring it for goodreads). A really boring jerk.
I literally like every single other character better than Nate. And a lot of the other characters suck.
Let's go back up to that synopsis briefly. Nate is supposedly a "sensitive, modern man." Which is completely untrue. He's not sensitive in the least. He disparages all women in his life, painfully agonizes over mundane, archaic things about dating, women, relationships, none of which is new. Even worse is the thought that this book "reveals one particular (though also alarmingly familiar) young man’s thoughts about women and love." Which is technically true, only because it will be familiar to any woman who has ever dated a womanizing prick. Why is all this lauded as positive?! Without reading the book it might sound promising. After reading Love Affairs , it just points out what a terrible person and character Nate is.
So Nate spends 70% of the book trying to make his whinings about dating and relationships seem valid and worthwhile. The other 30% of the book is Nate interacting with friends at various restaurants or parties, and ALWAYS getting into random arguments about random philosophical/psychological/political topics they may or may not write articles about to sell for freelance gigs. Such as the export of labor as the height of capitalism. Or obesity. Or book reviews.
And seeing as there's no reason for me to care about these arguments: no common ground is struck, no argument is returned to or becomes a major plot point, and no one is ever in any danger of losing a gig or even suffering for money for some reason (probably because they all seem to have written a book for a huge advance - the plots and characters of which are treated as unimportant, inconsequential).
There's nothing for me to care about here. No actively stimulating plot. No stakes. Nate is a sexist, boring jerk who thinks he is Someone Important. Women tend to like him (who knows why), but he's bad at dating, he's selfish, and apart from his jerk-ness, doesn't have anything interesting going for him. I don't care is he gets a happy ending. Or even an unhappy ending. I would not recommend Nate or his boring, boorish story.