PositiveThe New YorkerIt’s not a comforting book, but it offers a mercilessly clear view into a man’s mind as he grows tired of a worthy woman ... Waldman has written a book of stately revenge, exposing all that is shallow and oblivious about Nate, and men like him. But it’s also a book of beautifully modulated sympathy—for men as well as women ... With her eye for social folly in the streets and restaurants of New York, Waldman resembles Edith Wharton. But where the manners and hierarchies of Wharton’s world are highly codified...Waldman’s characters are set adrift in a world without clear rules, and they torment themselves trying to figure out if they’ve in fact violated some ill-defined conventions of courtship and sexual etiquette ... Waldman’s sketches are warm; like Austen, she has love for her characters, whom she knows better than they know themselves ... a devastating portrayal of the subtle shifts in power that can ruin the blossoming of real love and sympathy between two people ... Even as we feel for Hannah, Waldman holds our anger at Nate in check. The novel is told with elegant detachment, allowing us to organize and judge the eccentricities and deficiencies of its characters ... The pleasures of this novel—its lucidity and wry humor—are mixed with the sting of recognizing the essential unfairness of the sexual mores of our moment: after years of liberated fun, many women begin to feel terribly lonely when realize they want a commitment; men, who seem to have all the power to choose, are also stuck with an unasked-for power to inflict hurt. We’ll have to keep searching for an arrangement that works better, and monogamous coupledom may not be it, Waldman suggests. But she offers no balm, no solution—and tacitly resists a culture that offers sunny advice and reassurance to women.
