The Futures: A New York love story - Tapa dura

This winter's cathartic read: a story that feels familiar yet wholly original, like every heartbreak ever (Marie Claire)

Tender and wise ... Pitoniak's voice is stylish and authentic, and perfect for exploring this rich territory: youth and love and New York City (Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Age of Miracles)

An unflinchingly honest tale of two young people trying to navigate expectations and learning to live with their own mistakes. A compelling and memorable debut (J. Courtney Sullivan, author of The Engagements)

The Futures reminded me of Brightness Falls, Jay McInerney's great novel of New York, for Pitoniak, like McInerney, possesses an instinctual understanding of the mechanisms that make the city run and a knack for embracing her characters' thornier sides. Utterly enjoyable (Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year)

The Futures is a haunting story of a relationship going wrong, set against the backdrop of a world that feels like it has gone utterly wrong, too. This will appeal to anybody who's been an early twenty-something and not known where life will go next. I loved it (Gillian McAllister, author of Everything but the Truth)

The Futures is a love story and so much more. It captures the heartaches and exhilarations of early adulthood with a keen eye, a big heart, superb writing and an artfully intricate plot. This is a book for people of all ages looking for a place in the world, and Anna Pitoniak is a young novelist with some serious writing chops (Meg Mitchell Moore, author of The Admissions)

Anna Pitoniak's debut novel, The Futures, is the perfect cocktail of smart prose, heartwarming characters, and unmatched savvy about modern city life. Like The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. or A Fortunate Age, this book will amaze and elate you. (Kristopher Jansma, author of The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards)

Mesmerizing... The novel's alternating structure is hypnotic. Pitoniak is an absolute ventriloquist, completely inhabiting the voice of the two protagonists--their ambitions, anxieties, pettiness, sadness, and great love for one another. I couldn't put it down (Sunil Yapa, author of Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist)

Set amid the 2008 financial collapse, Pitoniak's assured debut explores the cost of realizing-and misinterpreting-one's dreams... Navigating terrain-love and youth, college and city life-that's often oversimplified, Pitoniak eschews cliché for nuanced characterization and sharply observed detail. Evan and Julia ring true as 20-somethings, but Pitoniak's novel also speaks to anyone who has searched among possible futures for the way back to what Julia calls 'the person I had been all along' (Publishers Weekly)

Pitoniak's well-plotted, character-driven, interior-focused novel captures the knowable angst of the unknowable possibilities of modern young adulthood (Booklist)