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What Members Thought
Adelle Waldman really nails those ambivalent moments that crop up during the one-year "settling in" phase of a relationship. A bit of a downer in terms of highlighting human shortcomings and the disappointment intimacy can sometimes bring, but not because she doesn't write about such topics magnificently well. Her writing is incisive and keeps these Brooklyn "types" from being flat cliches. Instead, their struggles against type -- and Nate's failure to mediate a middle ground between intention a
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This is a great beach read! Waldman nails the NYC literary scene, as well as male-female relationships of people in their 20s/early 30s. (Took me back to the summer I interned at Random House like no other.) I feel like I know many men--and women--like Nate, like Hannah, like Aurit. Or perhaps a little bit of them is in each one of us. There's a lot of talk in other comments about this book that Waldman "hates" her characters. I don't think so--I think she exposes tendencies (demandingness, self
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I pretty much hated this book, though admit that it's readable. Too much telling and not enough showing.
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While the introspections of a self-involved hipster and his romantic travails does not seem like the sort of book that would grab me, I'm glad I looked past my initial reservations and dove in. Nathaniel is, of course, deeply annoying, but annoying in a way that perfectly captures the inner world of upper-middle-class people with no actual problems who somehow still can't quite manage to get their lives together. Funny and acerbic, with a few slings that strike rather close to home.
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Jun 24, 2013
Anika
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silly_soup
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Katie
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Jul 23, 2014
Annika
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Nov 20, 2014
Kirsty
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Oct 08, 2015
Stacy
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Mar 23, 2023
Phoebe
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