Vendor
	Liepman Literary Agency Marc Koralnik
Original language
English

GOING DUTCH

James Gregor

A sly and humorous portrait of modern relationships and an urban comedy of manners in the vein of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, James Gregor's Going Dutch finds a struggling gay male graduate student in an unexpectedyet stirringrelationship with his brilliant female classmate.

Exhausted by countless dead-end forays in the gay dating scene, surrounded constantly by friends but deeply lonely in New York City, drifting into the academic abyss, twenty-something graduate student Richard has plenty of sources of anxiety. But at the forefront is his crippling writer's block, which threatens daily to derail his graduate funding and leave Richard poor, directionless, and desperately single.

Enter Anne: his brilliant classmate who offers to help Richard write his papers in exchange for his company, despite Richard's fairly obvious sexual orientation. Still, he needs her help, and it doesn't hurt that Anne has folded Richard into her abundant lifestyle. What begins as an initially transactional relationship blooms suddenly into something more complex.

But then a one-swipe-stand with an attractive, successful lawyer named Blake becomes serious, and Richard suddenly finds himself unable to detach from Anne, entangled in her web of privilege, brilliance, and, oddly, her unabashed acceptance of Richard's flaws. As the two relationships reach points of serious commitment, Richard soon finds himself on a romantic and existential collision courseone that brings about surprising revelations.

Going Dutch is an incisive portrait of relationships in an age of digital romantic abundance, but it's also a heartfelt and humorous exploration of love and sexuality, and a poignant meditation on the things emotionally ravenous people seek from and do to each other. James Gregor announces himself with levity, and a fresh, exciting voice in his debut.

James Gregor holds an MFA in Fiction from Columbia. He has been a writer in residence at the Villa Lena Foundation in Tuscany and a bookseller at Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris. James was born and grew up in Canada. Going Dutch is his first novel.

Available products
Book Published 2019-08-01 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

"A comedy of manners for the (very) modern age." (Most Anticipated for 2019)

"A sardonic, procrastinating PhD candidate gets close to a classmate and questions his own sexuality in Gregor's excellent debut. Twenty-nine-year-old Richard Turner, a doctoral student studying medieval Italian literature at a New York City university, must show progress on his thesis to maintain his fellowship and living stipend. But his attention is on OkCupid, Grindr, and the bookstore employees, painters, urban gardeners he meets onlinedates he takes pleasure in relaying to his best friend, the socially brilliant Patrick. After being warned his funding will be revoked if he doesn't show progress, Richard turns to classmate Anne for help. Anne's luminous intelligence is evident (and intimidating) to everyone, including Richard. After working together and presenting their paper-in-progress at a conference, their halting academic partnership turns romantic. When a nearly forgotten online date resurfaces, Richard must think deeply about what he wants. Filled with pithy secondary characterssuch as Richard's haughty supervisor, Patrick's mischievous friends, and Anne's lazy activist roommatesGregor's on-the-nose depiction of New York liberal intelligentsia makes for wonderful satire: That line from Dante came to him. There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery. There is no greater sorrow than to feel like a horny loser in Brooklyn. This marvelously witty take on dating in New York City and the blurry nature of desire announces Gregor as a fresh, electric new voice." PW: Starred review (Aug.)

"Going Dutch casts a scintillating eye on the queer urban millennial male, throwing him into an impossibly complex love triangle and finding, within it, room for social critique that stings. James Gregor's debut novel swerves with a queasily, intimately familiar form of discomfort: the yearning of a generation faced with grim job prospects, heightened virtual connectivity, the seemingly endless and lonely and unbridgeable space between the excitement of singledom and the comfort of monogamy. It's a book of deceptive ambitions, a breezy page-turner that, every few pages, slides in an observation that inspires some combination of laughter, mortification, and admiration." Read more...