The Unknowns

Starred review from March 18, 2013
A geek turned dot-com millionaire tries to hack the irrational pathways of love in Roth’s memorable debut. For high school computer nerd Eric Muller, discovering the opposite sex is a “revelation.” Determined to apply the scientific method to landing a girl, he begins “gathering data” on the opposite sex, only to have his embarrassing research exposed. After college, however, a Silicon Valley windfall gives Eric enough confidence and money to help even a geek get a girl into bed. But when Eric meets Maya, a reporter, real intimacy is complicated by Eric’s attempts to “solve” her unresolved past, putting his first real relationship at risk. This story is set in 2002, against the backdrop of the pending invasion of Iraq, with Americans at odds over an unknowable future, a subtle and illuminating parallel that underscores Eric’s own uncertainty. Roth presents two narrative threads in alternating chapters and is equally adept at inhabiting both adolescent Eric and the smoother adult he becomes. Wry observational humor and captivating internal monologues make this promising new voice reminiscent of Ben Lerner and Joshua Ferris. Agent: Anna Stein, Aitken Alexander Associates.

March 1, 2013
A dot-com millionaire with an analytical mind and crippled maturity clumsily negotiates the minefields of adult relationships. Whether you blame Nick Hornby, Junot Diaz or Tom Perrotta, they've collectively inspired a rash of novels whose main characters are dyed-in-the-wool SOBs. Such is the case with this earnestly written portrait of a cad by debut novelist Roth. It may also say something that the novel starts with a badly timed, Ecstasy-inspired romp and ends in a strip club. Our nominal hero is Eric Muller, a tense, gifted programmer who hit it big with a bit of popular software. He has the serious hots for Maya Marcom, a journalist who's just old enough not to buy into Eric's bullshit moves. Threaded through the story are flashbacks to Eric's childhood, complete with an embarrassing adolescent incident in which his journal, marking observations about his female classmates, fell into enemy hands. Less embarrassing and more painful is Maya's stern confession that her father, Donald, molested her regularly as a child. But something strikes Eric as odd about her story, and he tracks down her father in California to hear both sides of the forlorn tale. His obsession with her clearly painful past leads to a showdown over the veracity of memory and the fragility of loyalty. Roth tries to mitigate some of Maya's angst with a weak subplot about Eric's entrepreneurial father and his get-rich-quick schemes, but it never quite gels. Eric is also something of a philosopher without a philosophy, which leads to lines like this one: "We hang here long enough to etch the moment onto the surfaces of our brains, so that in every one of the infinite possible futures we will each be able to remember exactly what the other looked like in the moment right before we started kissing, when we had no inkling of the world of trouble to come." No pressure or anything. The messy story of a guy neither bad enough to be evil, nor good enough for redemption.

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May 15, 2013
Roth cracks the code of the male ego and nerd culture in his meditative and absorbing debut. Formerly an ungainly, computer-obsessed high-schooler who sheepishly tracked female classmates in a journal, Eric Muller has grown into a twentysomething self-made millionaire after founding and quickly selling a dot-com start-up in 2002. Now capable of luring women to bed with droll sarcasm and painstakingly calculated guile, Eric meets Maya, a journalist for a San Francisco alt-weekly, whose quick wit proves irresistibly challenging to Eric. Meanwhile, others seem to assess his success with the expectation of a handout. A onetime schoolmate Eric has since snubbed considers dropping out of MIT to start a computer-programming company with him, his mother battles postdivorce blues, and his financially desperate father seeks help to redeem his failed attempts as an entrepreneur. As Eric hides from the feebleminded, he unwittingly bares his soul to Maya, who reveals a startlingly dark secret about her past that might thwart his advances. A convincingly introspective narrative that traces the masculine rationale, Roth's novel reinterprets love in the digital age.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)