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Published Sep 2016
224 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
From the award-winning author of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, a novel as unsettling as it is impossible to put down.
David Federman has never felt appreciated. An academically gifted yet painfully forgettable member of his New Jersey high school class, the withdrawn, mild-mannered freshman arrives at Harvard fully expecting to be embraced by a new tribe of high-achieving peers. Initially, however, his social prospects seem unlikely to change, sentencing him to a lifetime of anonymity.
Then he meets Veronica Morgan Wells. Struck by her beauty, wit, and sophisticated Manhattan upbringing, David becomes instantly infatuated. Determined to win her attention and an invite into her glamorous world, he begins compromising his moral standards for this one, great shot at happiness. But both Veronica and David, it turns out, are not exactly as they seem.
Loner turns the traditional campus novel on its head as it explores ambition, class, and gender politics. It is a stunning and timely literary achievement from one of the rising stars of American fiction.
"Starred Review. An enthralling portrait of male narcissism and voyeuristic obsession." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. Stunning - and profoundly disconcerting…A startlingly sharp study of not just collegiate culture, but of social forces at large; a novel as absorbing as it is devastating." - Kirkus
"We know something very bad is going to happen, and though some may guess the reveal, the reader is nonetheless compelled to frantically turn the pages." - Publishers Weekly
"Wayne (The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, 2012) tells a story of college life and adolescent lust that is a witty, polished, laugh-out-loud exercise in satire that will resonate with readers who have a taste for the purposely overstated." - Booklist
"I found myself amused and then - with creeping force - afraid, repulsed, and ultimately unwilling to put it down." - Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams and The Gin Closet
"Teddy Wayne perfectly conjures the mind of a keenly observant, socially ambitious, and utterly heartless college student. Yet no matter what outlandish things David does, I couldn't help but root for him - until the book's gut-punch ending." - Adelle Waldman, bestselling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
"The twists in the plot keep the reader's heart racing, even as the protagonist's blood runs cold." - Matthew Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves
"It's a wonderfully unnerving and unreliable first-person account of a dangerous stalker who is also a shy teenager just trying to get a date with the popular girl in school. This impossible-to-reconcile character, mixed with Wayne's wry charm, makes Loner as thrilling as it is cautionary." - Jesse Eisenberg, author of Bream Gives Me Hiccups
This information about Loner was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
photo: Kate Greathead
Teddy Wayne is the author of Loner, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, and Kapitoil. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers' Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship as well as a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, the PEN/Bingham Prize, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times, and McSweeney's.
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