The Futures
2017 • 320 pages
Ratings4
Average rating3
15
Ratings4
Average rating3
ONE OF REFINERY29's BEST BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF the Skimm's BEST BOOKS OF 2017 "The next great New York novel."-Town & Country "A story that feels familiar yet wholly original, like every heartbreak ever."-Marie Claire "Pitoniak's precise and incisive powers of observation give us a book with startling grace notes ... As in earlier, seminal novels about similar 20-something cohorts-among them Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar-the city is another mirror character, a puzzle the protagonists must solve as they come to grips with their own lives.--NPR.org In this dazzling debut novel about love and betrayal, a young couple moves to New York City in search of success-only to learn that the lives they dream of may come with dangerous strings attached. Julia and Evan fall in love as undergraduates at Yale. For Evan, a scholarship student from a rural Canadian town, Yale is a whole new world, and Julia--blond, beautiful, and rich--fits perfectly into the future he's envisioned for himself. After graduation, and on the eve of the great financial meltdown of 2008, they move together to New York City, where Evan lands a job at a hedge fund. But Julia, whose privileged upbringing grants her an easy but wholly unsatisfying job with a nonprofit, feels increasingly shut out of Evan's secretive world. With the market crashing and banks failing, Evan becomes involved in a high-stakes deal at work--a deal that, despite the assurances of his Machiavellian boss, begins to seem more than slightly suspicious. Meanwhile, Julia reconnects with someone from her past who offers a glimpse of a different kind of live. As the economy craters, and as Evan and Julia spin into their separate orbits, they each find that they are capable of much more--good and bad--than they'd ever imagined. Rich in suspense and insight, Anna Pitoniak's gripping debut reveals the fragile yet enduring nature of our connections: to one another and to ourselves. THE FUTURES is a glittering story of a couple coming of age, and a searing portrait of what it's like to be young and full of hope in New York City, a place that so often seems determined to break us down--but ultimately may be the very thing that saves us.
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It's difficult to finish a book when you don't like any of the main characters, but I did, so it's probably some testament to the author's writing skills.
The book is told in alternating points of view of Evan and Julia who meet in college and fall in love and then decide to move in together after graduation. Evan joins a hedge fund in New York and Julia struggles to find her way in the real world. The reader is supposed to empathize with their struggles after college, when they are still unsure of what they want to do or where they want to be; but I wasn't able to do that. Evan falls deep into the muck that is hedge funds, unknowingly at first, but doesn't try to do the right thing later because he thinks he deserves the payoff; forgetting his girlfriend in the midst of his soaring ambition.
Julia comes from a privileged background and finds a job through her connections because she isn't actually interested in anything. She comes across as very entitled and selfish, trying to come up with pathetic justifications for her infidelity but what ultimately made me hate her is when she justifies not telling Evan about her affair with Adam because it's too hard to find a new place to live. I mean, come on !!!!!!! This is totally ridiculous. After this point, the only reason to read through was not to abandon the book midway. Ultimately, when bad things happens to Evan and Julia, it almost feels like they had it coming.
This book might work with readers who can relate more with issues about new college graduates dealing with the real world but this was not for me.
