His well-intentioned missteps with reporter Juliet and editorial assistant Elisa earn him tireless tsk-tsk reprimands and a rep for being 'the kind of guy women call an asshole.' When he begins dating a seemingly perfect-for-him writer named Hannah, we wonder whether Nate will adapt or strike out yet again.

Nate hates feeling guilty over the many women he hurts (female tears in this novel flow with a tenacious persistence, to Nate's irritation). But when it comes to relationships, he's achingly aware of the hidden traps and unsought responsibility of this power. is an absorbing tale of one young man's search for happiness-and an inside look at how he really thinks about women, sex and love.īrooklynite Nathaniel Piven, 'a product of a postfeminist, 1980s childhood,' is the modern male inheritor of a dating world where the enduring gender imbalance gives him the upper hand. With tough-minded intelligence and wry good humor The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Is romance? Novelist Adelle Waldman plunges into the psyche of a flawed, sometimes infuriating modern man-one who thinks of himself as beyond superficial judgment, yet constantly struggles with his own status anxiety, who is drawn to women, yet has a habit of letting them down in ways that may just make him an emblem of our times. In Nate's 21st-century literary world, wit and conversation are not at all dead. When one relationship grows more serious, Nate is forced to consider what it is he really wants. After several lean and striving years, he has his pick of both magazine assignments and women: Juliet, the hotshot business reporter Elisa, his gorgeous ex-girlfriend, now friend and Hannah, 'almost universally regarded as nice and smart, or smart and nice,' who holds her own in conversation with his friends. 'Adelle Waldman just may be this generation's Jane Austen' - The Boston GlobeĪ debut novel by a brilliant young woman about the romantic life of a brilliant young man. Waldman has sorted and cross-categorized the inhabitants of Nate's world with a witty, often breathtaking precision.' -Maria Russo, The New York Times 'Adelle Waldman's debut novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., scrutinizes Nate and the subculture that he thrives in with a patient, anthropological detachment. A New York Times Editors' Choice and a Washington Post Notable book. The national bestseller, named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, NPR, Slate, The Economist, The New Republic, Bookforum, Baltimore City Paper, The Daily Beast, National Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Reader, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Buzzfeed and many others.

The love affairs of nathaniel p review