In her acclaimed debut novel, Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld created a
touchstone with her pitch-perfect portrayal of adolescence. Her prose is
as intensely realistic and compelling as ever in The Man of My Dreams,
a disarmingly candid and sympathetic novel about the collision of a
young woman's fantasies of family and love with the challenges and
realities of adult life.
Hannah Gavener is fourteen in the summer of 1991. In the magazines she
reads, celebrities plan elaborate weddings; in Hannah's own life, her
parents' marriage is crumbling. And somewhere in between these two
extremes--just maybe--lie the answers to love's most bewildering
questions. But over the next decade and a half, as she moves from
Philadelphia to Boston to Albuquerque, Hannah finds that the questions
become more rather than less complicated: At what point can you no
longer blame your adult failures on your messed-up childhood? Is
settling for someone who's not your soul mate an act of maturity or an
admission of defeat? And if you move to another state for a guy who
might not love you back, are you being plucky--or just pathetic?
None of the relationships in Hannah's life are without complications.
There's her father, whose stubbornness Hannah realizes she's
unfortunately inherited; her gorgeous cousin, Fig, whose misbehavior
alternately intrigues and irritates Hannah; Henry, whom Hannah first
falls for in college, while he's dating Fig; and the boyfriends who love
her more or less than she deserves, who adore her or break her heart. By
the time she's in her late twenties, Hannah has finally figured out what
she wants most--but she doesn't yet know whether she'll find the courage
to go after it.
Full of honesty and humor, The Man of My Dreams is an unnervingly
insightful and beautifully written examination of the outside forces and
personal choices that make us who we are.
