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Published Jul 2013
224 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Eric Muller has been trying to hack the girlfriend problem since puberty, and all his attempts have backfired. As a high school freshman, Eric takes detailed notes on the girls in his class, hoping to find the one who will deign to go out with him. But when his notebook of "research" falls into into the hands of his peers, social disaster ensues.
Flash forward to 2002. Eric is a Silicon Valley millionaire. He's figured out how to coax girls into bed with a protocol of ironic remarks and carefully timed intimacies, but he's never been in love. So when he falls for Maya, a disarmingly clever young journalist who sees through his moves, he's in virgin territory. When Eric discovers that her past may hold a dark secret, he must decide: Do the facts - the data - of her life matter? Or does it only matter that he loves her?
A funny, deceptively powerful novel, The Unknowns will delight fans of Jonathan Tropper and Joshua Ferris.
"Starred Review. Wry observational humor and captivating internal monologues make this promising new voice reminiscent of Ben Lerner and Joshua Ferris." - Publishers Weekly
"The messy story of a guy neither bad enough to be evil, nor good enough for redemption." - Kirkus
"Gabriel Roth is a natural. This is a very assured first book - fast, funny, full of snappy dialogue, and never losing its poise even when it's glancing into the abyss. I think he's a find." - Sebastian Faulks, author of A Week in December and Devil May Care
"A wise and mature novel, a cool and contemporary one. It announces the arrival of a bright new talent." - Andrew O'Hagan, author of Our Fathers and The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe
This information about The Unknowns 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.
Gabriel Roth was born and raised in London and educated at Brown University and at San Francisco State University, from which he received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. For several years he was employed as a reporter and editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He now works as a writer and software developer and lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. The Unknowns is his first novel.
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