The Man of My Dreams: A Novel-Fast Shipping

Description

Inher acclaimed debut novel, Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld created a touchstone with herpitch-perfect portrayal of adolescence. Her prose is as intensely realistic and compellingas ever in The Man of My Dreams, a disarmingly candid and sympathetic novel aboutthe collision of a young woman’s fantasies of family and love with the challengesand realities of adult life.

Hannah Gavener is fourteen in the summer of 1991. Inthe magazines she reads, celebrities plan elaborate weddings; in Hannah’s own life,her parents’ marriage is crumbling. And somewhere in between these two extremes—justmaybe—lie the answers to love’s most bewildering questions. But over the next decadeand a half, as she moves from Philadelphia to Boston to Albuquerque, Hannah findsthat the questions become more rather than less complicated: At what point can youno longer blame your adult failures on your messed-up childhood? Is settling forsomeone who’s not your soul mate an act of maturity or an admission of defeat? Andif you move to another state for a guy who might not love you back, are you beingplucky—or just pathetic?

None of the relationships in Hannah’s life are withoutcomplications. There’s her father, whose stubbornness Hannah realizes she’s unfortunatelyinherited; her gorgeous cousin, Fig, whose misbehavior alternately intrigues andirritates Hannah; Henry, whom Hannah first falls for in college, while he’s datingFig; and the boyfriends who love her more or less than she deserves, who adore heror break her heart. By the time she’s in her late twenties, Hannah has finally figuredout what she wants most—but she doesn’t yet know whether she’ll find the courageto go after it.

Full of honesty and humor, The Man of My Dreams is an unnervinglyinsightful and beautifully written examination of the outside forces and personalchoices that make us who we are.