Ew, David. ( )

Loner is told through the narrater David Federman during his first semester at Harvard and his immediate infatuation with other freshman, Veronica and his stop at nothing attitude to be with her.

Teddy Wayne did a good job at making David more and more spine chilling as the story goes. At first you feel sorry for him and want him to succeed, but then you begin questioning his actions and reasoning. The way the author uses "YOU" in replacement to Veronica gives the reader the all more creeped out vibe.

I don't want to give out too much more because I feel like I will. The book was good, definitely not something I would read often since it did such a good job at making me so uncomfortable, but it is a subject manner I feel like isn't touched on often. Wayne's writing makes you question why you still feel sorry to a character who is doing things he absolutely shouldn't be doing. ( )

I rather enjoyed this one, at least up until the ending, which I found preposterous. Maybe its a story and character, to whom I felt a certain connection. A promising bright NY suburban kid, David Federman, with few high school friends, goes to Harvard College. He finds others like himself and becomes part of a group in some senses for the first time; however, he is bedazzled by a sophisticated NYC graduate of the Chapin School and essentially follows her around campus, trying to take the same classes. He even starts dating her roommate as an excuse to snoop in her room. He ingratiates himself, and thinks they are moving towards a friendship until he steals her final paper for a class on gender relations, learning the truth. As the great Stevie Nicks sang: "Shatter your illusions of love. Is it over now? Do you know how to pick up the pieces and go home?" ( )

I found this book through Hoopla's "similar authors" algorithm. I listened to Ann Patchett's latest, and Teddy Wayne came up as a "similar author". Hmm....OK.

So I started to listen. And honestly at first I really did not like the narrator. I felt like he was working way too hard to make David Faderman, the main character/narrator, seem like a geeky oversmart Jewish east coaster. But I got used to the accent (though he did a really bad female British accent--comically bad, but the character of Suzanne was minor). But I kind of got pulled in and ended up impressed with the story. Maybe the accent is authentic-ish for suburban northern NJ? I have no idea.

David was a quiet smart guy at his suburban New Jersey high school. So quiet that most of his classmates are surprised when he gets into Harvard. He can even speak words, phrases, and entire sentences backward--it's his trick, or maybe tick. And that is where the novel starts--freshman David moving into his Harvard dorm, parents in tow. David--like every freshman, including his suitemate--wants to have THE Harvard experience. Friends, girls, parties, interesting classes, studying, straight As. David though, wants to reinvent himself at Harvard as a smart popular guy--he doesn't even respond to emails from his high school friends off at their colleges, as he is glad to be rid of them. He quickly falls in with a group of new friends, but he thinks they are below him too. He really is...a loner (ba dum TIS).

But is David really a friend at all? This novel ends up being suspenseful and creepy.

I tagged this as YA. Is it? It's certainly not middle school material, but this would be an excellent read for the 16-20 yo set. ( )

David Federman went unnoticed in high school. Even his high grades were overlooked by all but his teachers. His friend group was, he felt, composed of the detritus of high school society and he longed to be noticed by the popular kids.

We were studious but not collectively brilliant enough to be nerds, nor sufficiently specialized to be geeks. We might have formed, in aggregate, one thin mustache and a downy archipelago of facial hair. We joked about sex with the vulgar fixation of virgins. We rarely associated outside of school and sheepishly nodded when passing in the halls, aware that each of us somehow reduced the standing of the other--that as a whole we were lesser than the sum of our parts.

Still, he gets into Harvard and arrives ready to start an entirely different life where he is finally appreciated and admired, only to find himself in the same social group as before. But on that first day he sees Veronica, a beautiful, wealthy girl from the privileged background of private New York schools and effortless social fluency. He is immediately smitten.

What follows is an upending of all the usual tropes of the literary college novel. We've all read plenty of books in which the awkward but good-natured guy faces a few hurdles, but eventually finds out who he really is and along the way wins the heart of the girl. This is not one of those books. We've all read the WMFuN,* in which the guy makes mistakes, but finds redemption, after an appropriate penance, with the more down-to-earth girl (and often gets to sleep with the object of his affection). This is certainly not one of those novels. Instead, Teddy Wayne takes us into the mind of someone we think we've all met before, whose intentions are familiar to us and shows us that we are very much mistaken.

Loner is fantastic. Wayne manages to create a brilliant and uncomfortable character study in the form of the college novel that is so immersive and insightful and off-putting. He's an excellent writer who is an even better observer of people's behavior and I look forward to reading more by him.

* White Male Fuck-up Novel. ( )