Book Review: The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman

Title: The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

Author: Adelle Waldman

Copyright: 2013

Genre: Contemporary Literature

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company, LLC

Relationships are a confusing maze; sometimes you get to the cheese and sometimes you don’t.

Nathaniel (Nate) Pivens claims he doesn't care about the cheese, yet he stumbles awkwardly in and out of relationships. He’s thirty, living in Brooklyn, and is a writer on the rise. His social circle lines their bookshelves with works by Borges, Sevvo, and Bulgakov. They are the literati. The striving and not-so-striving writers who work for publishers, write for magazines, and in their free time hope to become the next great novelist. It’s from the literati herd that Nate hunts for his romantic relationships. Most of the women in the group are as well read as his Harvard self or at least pretend to be and that’s good enough for him. Pity is needed for the women who see Nate as a catch.

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P by Adelle Waldman opens with a scene that equates to a chalk outline of all the relationships Nate has failed at and will fail at. Nate’s self-talk is cringe-worthy. He describes dating as treading on women’s weaknesses and dismisses their feelings when they stray from logic in the least degree. He believes women, like men, “were as capable of rational thought; they just didn't appear to be interested in it.”

Children are expert rationalizers, especially, anytime they do something wrong like accidentally punch their brother. One reason after another explains their innocent actions. Nate reminds me of a child. He’s an imaginative rationalizer. When his relationships flounder, he always has a logical reason that recants his bad behavior.

Nate’s the jerk with no self-awareness who is also your best friend. Fortunately, most of my male friends who used to fall into this category have changed their ways after becoming fathers of daughters (karma?). For my friends, the realization that some jerk may treat or think about their daughters the way they used to act toward women set them on the path of atonement.

But Nate’s not a daddy yet and at his rate of failed relationships may never become one. His most healthy relationship with a woman is with Aurit, who’s a platonic friend and a respected fellow writer. She disembowels his rationalizations, not in a therapist way, but in a calling him on his BS way.

Nate’s thoughts are frustratingly too honest and simultaneously endearing which makes him hard to hate. His take on dating, like several of his thoughts, states a quiet communal truth:  

It’s meritocracy applied to personal life, but there’s no accountability. We submit ourselves to these intimate inspections and simultaneously inflict them on others and try to keep our psyches intact – to keep from becoming cold and callous – and we hope that at the end of it we wind up happier than our grandparents, who didn’t spend this vast period of their lives, these prime years, so thoroughly alone, cold and explicitly anatomized again and again.

It’s these kind of thoughts that smooth Nate’s mildly misogynist edge and uncloaks his insecurities. The psychic walk through Nate’s brain reveals that he’s spent most of his life on the fringe of popularity. The upcoming publishing of his book has ameliorated his popularity with women and within the literati. But most of his memories echo a sadness that stems from not always understanding social mores and from his deep desire to fit in. His frequent reference to his parents’ immigrant status hints at the duality of identity that children of immigrants often express as a result of straddling two cultures – one at home, a different one at school.

I rated the book four out of five stars on Goodreads. The writing is excellent and has a siren quality to it. The rating is also supported by my being fooled. I was convinced that the story was written by a man until my finger swiped to the author bio. I like stories that expose fissures in my assumptions about myself and the world. The fact that Waldman is a woman erupted my belief that I was mature enough to not buy into the Mars versus Venus argument. Apparently, I’m the mental age of a thirteen year old.

Am I a sexist? Most of my life, the male species has surrounded me. I have three brothers, no sisters. My cousins are mostly male. I spent twelve years working in the male-dominated tech field. I've been so thoroughly schooled in the male world that when I birthed a son, a dear friend responded, “Thank goodness, what would you do with a girl?” She wasn't being sarcastic. If it wasn't for being in a sorority in college, I may have never applied mascara or learned how to balance a checkbook.

If a guy had written the book, my guilt wouldn't be so heavy. I've been married for over a decade and never questioned that my husband would want anything different from our relationship than what I do – love and support. I couldn't imagine him ever having the thoughts that Nate does; yet, I easily found the thoughts believable of any other guy. Believing in Nate’s character is like thinking that every packet of sugar, but the one you’re eating tastes sour.

So, I’ll dismiss my sexist lapse by taking the Nate way out and rationalize. Waldman's debut is an incredible study of character, not only of Nate, but almost everyone Nate comes into contact with. As Nate delves into his past or examines his current girlfriends, each word pieces pixels together into a detailed image of a person. Each person’s description in turn further builds Nate’s character. The rationalization is that Nate was very believable so much so that by the end of the novel, I knew enough about Nate to cringe again when his thoughts foreshadowed one more potential plunge off the failed-relationship-cliff.

Pick The Love Affairs ofNathaniel P. up or download it. It’s a fast, enjoyable read.