But it’s also a book of beautifully modulated sympathy-for men as well as women.

In trying to understand the source of his self-satisfaction, which is ultimately the source of his power, Waldman has written a book of stately revenge, exposing all that is shallow and oblivious about Nate, and men like him.

Her Nathaniel Piven, a thirty-something-year-old Brooklyn novelist and burgeoning public intellectual, is thoughtful yet careless, open-minded yet absurdly entitled. Waldman, herself a woman in her early thirties, has cleverly chosen to tell the story of our generation’s romantic chaos not from the perspective of a woman panicked that she’s wasting her prime but from that of a young man trying to enjoy his. And bracing truth can be its own consolation. I wanted to turn around and lend this woman the book I had in my hands: Adelle Waldman’s “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.” It’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. Men in New York-far outnumbered by women, and with time on their side-sometimes seem to hold all the cards. And it is often accompanied by the suspicion that the man in question is devoting little attention to the matter, perfectly content with his disordered apartment, his soon-to-be-brilliant career, and his sex life, which is as varied and anarchic as his collection of mismatched beer glasses. I recognized this female lament I’ve heard it countless times.

The love affairs of nathaniel