Loner

April 4, 2016
Wayne’s third novel (after The Love Song of Jonny Valentine) is about a Harvard freshman who becomes obsessed with his attractive classmate. David is an intelligent yet largely unremarkable kid from New Jersey, who upon beginning his first college semester, finds himself in the all too familiar situation of being lumped into the second tier socially. But when he spies the pretty Veronica during orientation, he’s not just smitten; he’s determined—at the cost of everything else in his life—to catch her eye: “This was going to be the best year of my life, a Technicolor romp after so many donnish slogs.” David begins dating Veronica’s roommate, Sara, solely to be close to and to spy on Veronica, and by following her around he manages to enroll in her English class, where one day she asks him for help on an essay on the voyeuristic themes of Henry James’s Daisy Miller. David’s efforts and manipulations to get Veronica to notice his devotion grow increasingly discomforting to the reader, a credit to the sly first-person narration. 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. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic.

Starred review from July 1, 2016
A stunning--and profoundly disconcerting--take on the campus novel, Wayne's (The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, 2013, etc.) latest is as dark as it is addictive.Academically and personally troubled, Harvard freshman David Alan Federman has spent his adolescence on the outskirts of his life. He is, by his own observation, defined not by his presence but by his utter forgetability, his complete absence of notable traits. His own photograph is "a rectangular vacuum of charisma." At Harvard, though, he's determined to make himself known. It's at a mandatory orientation meeting that he's first captivated by the otherworldly being of Veronica Morgan Wells, paragon of wealth, of elegance, of "worldliness...taste...[and] social capital." He is suburban New Jersey; she is all Park Avenue, out of his league. Instead, David begins a (relatively) chaste relationship with Veronica's more-appropriate roommate, a nice, earnest Latin American history major, the kind of virginal Midwesterner he imagines someone like him would end up with. And still, he lives and breathes for the certainty of his eventual relationship with Veronica, intertwining himself in her life at any cost. But as David's intensity escalates, it becomes clear that Veronica has an agenda of her own. Slowly, and then all at once, the novel artfully snowballs to its arresting (if somewhat abrupt) conclusion, but despite its elements of psychological suspense, the pleasure of the book is not in its ultratimely plot but in its complicated--and unsettlingly familiar--cast. These people are nuanced even when they're disturbing, human even when they're horrendous. A spectacular stylist, Wayne is deeply empathetic toward his characters, but--brutally and brilliantly--he refuses to either defend or excuse them. A startlingly sharp study of not just collegiate culture, but of social forces at large; a novel as absorbing as it is devastating.

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Starred review from June 1, 2016

In his New Jersey high school, David Federman was not a member of the in crowd, but he prides himself on having used his superior intellect to outshine his classmates by being accepted into Harvard University. On this elite campus, he pushes to be noticed academically and socially by those who matter, and to distance himself from less desirable peers. During orientation, as others eagerly introduce themselves, David spies a striking girl arriving late, who exhibits a cool, detached demeanor; he feels an immediate connection and senses their destiny as a couple. He quickly learns her name is Veronica, sets himself up to meet her, and works to impress her. On social media he learns that she is a rich, prep-school Manhattanite; he enrolls in the same English class; and he watches where she goes and with whom. Absent a moral compass, David increasingly stalks Veronica, ultimately befriending and bedding her suitemate in an effort to get closer to Veronica and to show off his virility. Suffice it to say, things do not progress smoothly. VERDICT Wayne (The Love Song of Jonny Valentine) offers a witty and fascinating peek into today's youth culture, and delivers an enthralling portrait of male narcissism and voyeuristic obsession through the literary device of an unreliable, though brilliant, narrator. [See Prepub Alert, 3/21/16.]--Sheila M. Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2016
Once described as a loner, David Federman goes off to Harvard determined to upgrade to a higher social stratum. Instead he winds up as the same social pariah he was in high school, a member of a declasse group of dorm mates that calls itself the Mathews Marauders. But all of that becomes irrelevant when he spots her, Veronica Morgan Wells, the girl of his dreams, and, suddenly obsessed, begins to devote himself to plotting and scheming how to win her. He even begins dating her roommate, hoping to get closer to her. David tells all in his first-person voice, an exercise in affected, polysyllabic style. Consider his rhapsodic description of Veronica's name: the quadrisyllable that halves its beats at the middle name, dividing again at its pluralized terminus of subterranean depths. That says it all. 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)