The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P by Adelle Waldman
Title: The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
Author: Adelle Waldman
Published: 2013
Type: Fiction
Pages: 240
“I feel like you want to think what you're feeling is really deep, like some seriously profound existential shit. But to me, it looks like the most tired, the most average thing in the world, the guy who is all interested in a woman until the very moment when it dawns on him that he has her. Wanting only what you can't have. The affliction of shallow morons everywhere.”
In Brief:
Wow, this book pissed me off so much. Waldman does an impressive job making the titular narrator unbearable, yet the book is still compulsively readable and funny, as well as a detailed and thoughtful look at modern dating/masculinity.
Rating: 4.2
Synopsis:
“Writer Nate Piven's star is rising. 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. When one relationship grows more serious, Nate is forced to consider what it is he really wants.
In Nate's 21st-century literary world, wit and conversation are not at all dead. 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 Zown 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. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is a tale of one young man's search for happiness--and an inside look at how he really thinks about women, sex and love.”
Where I’m At:
This book was recommended to me – well, it wasn’t recommended to me. It was recommended to my partner by a friend of his, whom I’ve actually never met. But she and I share a love for Taylor Swift and Normal People, so I decided to read it even though my partner was (and continues to be) dragging his feet. I was kind of showing off.
Beyond that – I feel like I’m perhaps the exact target demographic for this book. I’m an urban, educated, millennial woman, who, if you somehow haven’t picked up on it already, has done my fair share of dating and encountered my fair share of what one might eloquently call “shitty dudes.” Everything in this book resonated. It felt personal. I’d text my partner and his friend things like “Nate is unbearable” and “I want to punch him.” I scribbled things in the margins like “ugh,” “yikes,” “ew,” and “fuck this guy.” I don’t normally get that upset in real life, let alone at a fictional character in a book! Similarly, the character of Hannah filled me with compassion as well as some self-hating scorn – I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and yell at her to get out of that relationship!
At one point, Nate says to an ex: “Maybe I’m just messed up somehow.” and I rolled my eyes so vigorously I can still feel the reverberations in my skull. I cannot even begin to try and count the number of times I’ve heard that from a guy.
All this to say – maybe this book hit too close to home for me, and my own experiences with dating and men might cloud my judgment. It seems reasonable that someone of a different gender or generation might have a wildly different reaction than mine. I still want my partner to read it (hint! once he finishes his grad apps!) so I can get the opinion of a “not-shitty dude,” but for now this is my blog so we’ll get into my opinions.
Getting Into it:
The first word that comes to mind when I think of Waldman’s writing style is “intelligent.” Here are some more: funny, observant, psychological, incisive, acute, witty, wise – you get the point. The book is in many ways a character study in which she absolutely skewers men, but she doesn’t hold back from women either, nor the young/urban/educated/”latte liberal” culture as a whole, calling them (us) out for hypocrisy and narcissism. It’s remarkable, really, that she has something new to say on the subject when it’s the focus of so many other books, tv shows, movies – yet it is genuinely fresh, astoundingly real. It reminded me of Normal People in that way, just more cynical, less romantic.
In spite of all this, Waldman is never cruel to her characters. She doesn’t mock them, doesn’t turn them into caricatures or straw men. Instead, she treats them with gentle humor and sympathy, making them utterly believable, more than their glaring flaws.
So let’s get into that. Nate is awful. He cheats on the women he’s seeing. He gaslights them. On one occasion we learn about early on, he impregnates a woman then ghosts her after she has an abortion. He’s conceited, he’s callow, he’s selfish. He’s definitely misogynistic.
Although it wasn’t something he’d admit aloud, he often thought women were either deep or reasonable, but rarely both… Sometimes he wondered whether he was a bit misogynistic.
I wrote in the margin: yes.
You want more proof? He refers to Hannah as “a little nuts,” after he breaks up with her (and she responds perfectly reasonably). When she says something smart, he assumes she’s paraphrasing a professor. He frets repeatedly about how hot his friends think she is, stares at other women’s breasts right in front of her, doesn’t really care whether or not she enjoys the sex. He disdainfully looks around Hannah’s somewhat-messy room and reflects:
It almost too neatly embodied so much that was unattractive about women: mustiness, materialism, clutter.
By the end of the book, he doesn’t change.
And yet!
There are times where you, as the reader, feel bad for Nate. There are times that he really seems sweet, head over heels in love with Hannah, and Waldman captures the shallow enchantment of a new relationship so well, relatably:
The time he spent with Hannah – narrating his life, listening to her do the same, exchanging opinions, fucking – seemed like the real awake time.
Basically, Waldman pulls off an amazing feat so that as a reader, you can’t only hate Nate. Since Nate is the (unreliable) narrator, you’re in his head. And, like anyone, Nate thinks he’s a good guy. His intentions are good, and you see that. He’s self-aware, feels bad when he hurts someone else. He obviously does bad things, but is he a bad person? It’s not that straightforward. (I’m reminded of the time I cried “He’s not a bad person,” to my cousin after one particularly bad break up. “Yeah,” he responded uncomfortably, “but that doesn’t excuse that he did bad things.”)
Waldman also gives nuance to Hannah’s character – though it’s not quite the same, since she’s neither the narrator nor the focus. She’s not a perfect martyr to serve as a foil Nate. Though does seem funny, smart, and kind, she also seems sometimes whiny, self-righteous, and annoying. She twists herself into pretzels trying to be “cool” and “laidback” to please Nate, in the way that so many women I know do. She’s also more than just their relationship – at one point she comments:
“People expect girls from good middle-class families to be smart – but what they mean by smart is for a girl to have nice handwriting and a neat locker and to do her homework on time. They don’t expect ideas or much in the way of real thought.”
Which is sort of beside the point but resonated with me, and gave her character more layers of complexity. I appreciate Waldman for doing that, letting Hannah be a character of her own.
The main reason I didn’t rate this book higher is that I hated Nate so much, it was exhausting. Maybe Waldman could have been a bit less relentless with his loathsomeness – perhaps that’s why she kept the book relatively short. I wish there were more growth on Nate’s part – though I get that that’s the point, that people like Nate never change. It still would have made me feel better. I’ll also say that it’s quite heavy-handed, and some of the dialogue felt forced.
Still, I’ll recommend this book to anyone who’s ever dated a guy… or any guy who’s dated. Especially millennials, but I suspect other generations will get some perspective as well. It’s frustrating as hell, but still worth it.
