The Bachelor

Book excerpt: A “witty and wise” (People) debut novel about love and commitment, celebrity and obsession, poetry and reality TV. “Palmer’s novel wryly tracks an earnest interrogation of art and selfhood.”—The New Yorker Reeling from a breakup with his almost fiancée, the narrator of Andrew Palmer’s debut novel returns to his hometown in Iowa to house-sit for a family friend. There, a chance flick of the TV remote and a new correspondence with an old friend plunge him into unlikely twin obsessions: the reality show The Bachelor and the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet John Berryman. As his heart begins to mend, his fascination with each deepens, and somewhere along the way, representations of reality become harder and harder to distinguish from real life. Soon he finds himself corresponding with multiple love interests, participating in an ill-considered group outing, and trying to puzzle through the strange turn his life seems to have taken. An absorbing coming-of-age tale “that marks the debut of a significant talent” (Kirkus Reviews, starred), The Bachelor approaches—with wit and grace—the high-stakes questions of an overconnected world: If salvation can no longer be found in fame, can it still be found in romantic relationships? In an era of reality TV, where does entertainment end and reality begin? And why do we, season after season, repeat the same mistakes in love and life?