Books

The Unknowns

A Novel
By Gabriel Roth (Hardcover Book, 2013)
Eric Muller has been trying to hack the girlfriend problem for half his life. As a teenage geek, he discovered his gift for programming computers-but his attempts to understand women only confirm that he's better at writing code than connecting with human beings. Brilliant, neurotic, and lonely, Eric spends high school in the solitary glow of a screen.

By his early twenties, Eric's talent has made him a Silicon Valley millionaire. He can coax girls into bed with ironic remarks and carefully timed intimacies, but hiding behind wit and empathy gets lonely, and he fears that love will always be out of reach.

So when Eric falls for the beautiful, fiercely opinionated Maya Marcom, and she miraculously falls for him too, he's in new territory. But the more he learns about his perfect girlfriend's unresolved past, the further Eric's obsessive mind spirals into confusion and doubt. Can he reconcile his need for order and logic with the mystery and chaos of love?

This brilliant debut ushers Eric Muller-flawed, funny, irresistibly endearing-into the pantheon of unlikely heroes. With an unblinking eye for the absurdities and horrors of contemporary life, Gabriel Roth gives us a hilarious and heartbreaking meditation on self consciousness, memory, and love.

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  • Little, Brown and Company

    • Format: Hardcover Book

    • Price: $25.00 US/$28.00 CAN

    • ISBN-13: 9780316223287

    • On Sale Date: 07/02/2013

    • Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

    Full Details

    Formats Available: Hardcover Book, Electronic Book, Audiobook

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Eric Muller has been trying to hack the girlfriend problem for half his life. As a teenage geek, he discovered his gift for programming computers-but his attempts to understand women only confirm that he's better at writing code than connecting with human beings. Brilliant, neurotic, and lonely, Eric spends high school in the solitary glow of a screen.

By his early twenties, Eric's talent has made him a Silicon Valley millionaire. He can coax girls into bed with ironic remarks and carefully timed intimacies, but hiding behind wit and empathy gets lonely, and he fears that love will always be out of reach.

So when Eric falls for the beautiful, fiercely opinionated Maya Marcom, and she miraculously falls for him too, he's in new territory. But the more he learns about his perfect girlfriend's unresolved past, the further Eric's obsessive mind spirals into confusion and doubt. Can he reconcile his need for order and logic with the mystery and chaos of love?

This brilliant debut ushers Eric Muller-flawed, funny, irresistibly endearing-into the pantheon of unlikely heroes. With an unblinking eye for the absurdities and horrors of contemporary life, Gabriel Roth gives us a hilarious and heartbreaking meditation on self consciousness, memory, and love.

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.

  • "THE UNKNOWNS is wonderful, a wry, ironic novel about the perils of contemporary romance, where you can collect intimate details about people you've never met, but still not know the truth of somebody you want to love."

  • "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 Possible Life).

  • "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).

  • "What a funny, moving, brilliantly cut gem of a novel. An ever-shifting Venn diagram of love and logic, The Unknowns floored me." (author of Panorama City).

  • "The Unknowns feels at first like a very great and very funny coming-of-age novel, about a high-school loser destined for Internet riches. But then suddenly you realize you're reading something much more powerful: a beautiful and painful story about the dangers of learning too much-and about how little we can ever really know about other people."  (author of The Last Policeman).

  • "The Unknowns is so staggeringly funny and smart that its depths and sorrows, when they came, took my breath away." (author of Dare Me).

  • "Gabriel Roth's first novel is a warmly wry coming-of-age story and a darkly funny-and darkly resonant-satire of one effervescent moment in San Francisco's abusive relationship with technology. If Peter Thiel had backed a character from Infinite Jest, he would have gone on to look something like Eric Muller. A tender, comic debut from one of the coder-novelists of the future." (author of A Sense of Direction).

  • "Gabriel Roth's Eric Muller had me from the first obsessive aside, but I soon found myself watching through half-covered eyes as he made a bungle of every goddamn thing. I loved and cringed at every moment." (author of Love is a Canoe).

Formats

Product Details

The Unknowns
  • Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
  • Price: $25.00 US/$28.00 CAN
  • Pages: 224
  • Physical Dimensions: 5-1/2" x 8-1/4"
  • ISBN-13: 9780316223287
  • On Sale Date: 07/02/2013
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The Unknowns
© 2013 Hachette Book Group