Staff Pick
I'll be honest: this seems like a book I'd hate. It follows a privileged male protagonist who just sort of loafs through life, halfheartedly working on a book, and eventually cheating on his smart, funny, long-term girlfriend. But I couldn't hate it, it's just too damn good. Martin's writing is assured, his voice is well-developed, and his characters are incredibly compelling and real. Early Work is almost painfully clever at times, but self-aware enough to pull it off — I'm in awe of this phenomenal debut! Recommended By Lauren P., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
"What a debut! Early Work is one of the wittiest, wisest (sometimes silliest, in the best sense), and bravest novels about wrestling with the early stages of life and love, of creative and destructive urges, I’ve read in a while. The angst of the young and reasonably comfortable isn’t always pretty, but Andrew Martin possesses the prose magic to make it hilarious, illuminating, moving." — Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask and The Fun Parts
For young writers of a certain temperament — if they haven’t had such notions beaten out of them by MFA programs and the Internet — the delusion persists that great writing must be sought in what W. B. Yeats once called the “foul rag and bone shop of the heart.” That’s where Peter Cunningham has been looking for inspiration for his novel — that is, when he isn’t teaching at the local women’s prison, walking his dog, getting high, and wondering whether it’s time to tie the knot with his college girlfriend, a medical student whose night shifts have become a standing rebuke to his own lack of direction. When Peter meets Leslie, a sexual adventurer taking a break from her fiancé, he gets a glimpse of what he wishes and imagines himself to be: a writer of talent and nerve. Her rag-and-bone shop may be as squalid as his own, but at least she knows her way around the shelves. Over the course of a Virginia summer, their charged, increasingly intimate friendship opens the door to difficult questions about love and literary ambition.
With a keen irony reminiscent of Sam Lipsyte or Lorrie Moore, and a romantic streak as wide as Roberto Bolaño’s, Andrew Martin’s Early Work marks the debut of a writer as funny and attentive as any novelist of his generation.
“Beautifully executed and very funny, Early Work is a sharp-eyed, sharp-voiced debut that I didn’t want to put down.” — Julia Pierpont, author of Among the Ten Thousand Things and The Little Book of Feminist Saints
Review
"A wry and pitch-perfect novel about late-twentysomething writers and lazy-progressive creatives in varying stages of existential crisis...Early Work is a cautionary tale; it reveals, with damning irony, that one who romanticizes the agonized and drug-addled artist, prioritizing the lifestyle over any actual output, does so at his peril. Because, eventually, the people around him will have created some early work of their own — if only for the opportunity to move beyond it." Arianna Rebolini, BuzzFeed
Review
"Stunning...whip-smart and rather disturbing...[Andrew] Martin has a remarkable ear for natural dialogue and pitch-perfect, witty banter..." Dana Hansen, Chicago Review of Books
Review
"[Andrew] Martin introduces characters in sharp, funny flash-portraits that declare the book’s intention to perch, vape in hand, on the border of earnestness and satire...Early Work is a gift for those readers who like being flirted with by thoughtful and interesting people, and who like observing such people as they flirt with each other." Katy Waldman, The New Yorker
Review
"Marvelous...Read [Early Work] on a beach for the refreshment of a classic boy-meets-girl plot, or turn the pages more slowly to soak in some truly salty koans and morally insolvent characters...It’s an accomplished and delightful book, but there’s no hashtag for that." Molly Young, The New York Times
About the Author
Andrew Martin's stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Zyzzyva, and Tin House's Flash Fridays series, and his non-fiction has been published by The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, and others. Early Work is his first novel.