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A review by jennifer
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman
5.0
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.