An incisive, witty, and tender debut novel about love and commitment, celebrity and obsession, poetry and reality TV.
“This unassuming, sharp novel quietly questions love and the nature of perception in an overconnected world.”—The Seattle Times
Reeling from a breakup with his almost fiancée, the narrator of Andrew Palmer’s debut novel returns to his hometown in Iowa to house-sit for a family friend. There, a chance flick of the TV remote and a new correspondence with an old friend plunge him into unlikely twin obsessions: the reality show The Bachelor and the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet John Berryman. As his heart begins to mend, his fascination with each deepens. Somewhere along the way, representations of reality become harder and harder to distinguish from real life. Soon he finds himself corresponding with multiple love interests, participating in an ill-considered group outing, and trying to puzzle through the strange turn his life seems to have taken.
Intellectually ambitious and keenly observed, The Bachelor is also an absorbing coming-of-age tale that tells the story of finding one’s footing in love and art. If salvation can no longer be found in fame, can it still be found in romantic relationships? In an era in which reality TV can make two dozen women fall in love with one man in six weeks, where does entertainment end and reality begin? Why do we, season after season, repeat the same mistakes in love and life?
Genre: Literary Fiction
“This unassuming, sharp novel quietly questions love and the nature of perception in an overconnected world.”—The Seattle Times
Reeling from a breakup with his almost fiancée, the narrator of Andrew Palmer’s debut novel returns to his hometown in Iowa to house-sit for a family friend. There, a chance flick of the TV remote and a new correspondence with an old friend plunge him into unlikely twin obsessions: the reality show The Bachelor and the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet John Berryman. As his heart begins to mend, his fascination with each deepens. Somewhere along the way, representations of reality become harder and harder to distinguish from real life. Soon he finds himself corresponding with multiple love interests, participating in an ill-considered group outing, and trying to puzzle through the strange turn his life seems to have taken.
Intellectually ambitious and keenly observed, The Bachelor is also an absorbing coming-of-age tale that tells the story of finding one’s footing in love and art. If salvation can no longer be found in fame, can it still be found in romantic relationships? In an era in which reality TV can make two dozen women fall in love with one man in six weeks, where does entertainment end and reality begin? Why do we, season after season, repeat the same mistakes in love and life?
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"I will read anything Andrew Palmer writes. With shades of W. G. Sebald, Frederick Exley, and Ben Lerner, and a warmth and humor all its own, Palmer's first novel shows the hidden currents that bind our culture in songs of longing and hope--from John Berryman to dating shows, Homo literatus to NBA basketball, high lyricism to winter in the suburban Midwest. It is the definitive (literary) word on our reality-television era." - Greg Jackson
"Andrew Palmer's debut is a fantastically original chronicle of romantic mishap and artistic ambition. In its counterintuitive pairing of reality TV and confessional poetry, this book asks sneakily profound questions about the underlying structures of desire that dictate our lives. I loved it." - Andrew Martin
"Jane Austen might have written a book like this: a pitch-perfect story of the self-conscious agonies of searching for someone to marry, composed with a mastery of free indirect style; a piece of art as dizzying as the technological and cultural changes of its time, but in conversation with the works of the past. The Bachelor may be a satire, except that it is utterly sincere. The whole time I was reading it, I felt terrifically happy." - Salvatore Scibona
"Andrew Palmer's debut is a fantastically original chronicle of romantic mishap and artistic ambition. In its counterintuitive pairing of reality TV and confessional poetry, this book asks sneakily profound questions about the underlying structures of desire that dictate our lives. I loved it." - Andrew Martin
"Jane Austen might have written a book like this: a pitch-perfect story of the self-conscious agonies of searching for someone to marry, composed with a mastery of free indirect style; a piece of art as dizzying as the technological and cultural changes of its time, but in conversation with the works of the past. The Bachelor may be a satire, except that it is utterly sincere. The whole time I was reading it, I felt terrifically happy." - Salvatore Scibona
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