The Unknowns - Hardcover

Roth, Gabriel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1447235568 ISBN 13: 9781447235569

Publisher: Picador, 2013

Synopsis

Eric has survived his ostracised teens in the school computer basement of the mid-80s and seems to have everything: the dot com millions, the beautiful apartment, the quick mind, and even passable looks. But he has never quite found love. Until, with all the glamorous alliteration of a movie star, Maya Marcom arrives on his horizon. It's not easy to pursue the most alluring woman in North America when you're a misfiring circuit of over-analytical self-doubt and she has a killer line and a perfectly raised eyebrow. But as Eric refines his email technique, his date patter and his capacity to shut up after sex, he finds there's more to Maya Marcom than meets the eye. Will our loveable geek be able to conquer his dogged need to discover the whole truth about his lover -- or will they continue in bliss and wonder? This is a story about the mysteries of the heart, and the ways in which one fragile human being is harder to really know than enough computer code to make a fortune.

About this title

About the Author

Gabriel Roth was a reporter and editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian and now works as a writer and software developer. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

From Booklist

Roth cracks the code of the male ego and nerd culture in his meditative and absorbing debut. Formerly an ungainly, computer-obsessed high-schooler who sheepishly tracked female classmates in a journal, Eric Muller has grown into a twentysomething self-made millionaire after founding and quickly selling a dot-com start-up in 2002. Now capable of luring women to bed with droll sarcasm and painstakingly calculated guile, Eric meets Maya, a journalist for a San Francisco alt-weekly, whose quick wit proves irresistibly challenging to Eric. Meanwhile, others seem to assess his success with the expectation of a handout. A onetime schoolmate Eric has since snubbed considers dropping out of MIT to start a computer-programming company with him, his mother battles postdivorce blues, and his financially desperate father seeks help to redeem his failed attempts as an entrepreneur. As Eric hides from the feebleminded, he unwittingly bares his soul to Maya, who reveals a startlingly dark secret about her past that might thwart his advances. A convincingly introspective narrative that traces the masculine rationale, Roth’s novel reinterprets love in the digital age. --Jonathan Fullmer

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1447235568
• ISBN 13: 9781447235569
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 227