Exciting Times
Naoise Dolan, 2020
HarperCollins
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062968746
Summary
An intimate, bracingly intelligent debut novel about a millennial Irish expat who becomes entangled in a love triangle with a male banker and a female lawyer.
Ava, newly arrived in Hong Kong from Dublin, spends her days teaching English to rich children.
Julian is a banker. A banker who likes to spend money on Ava, to have sex and discuss fluctuating currencies with her. But when she asks whether he loves her, he cannot say more than "I like you a great deal."
Enter Edith. A Hong Kong–born lawyer, striking and ambitious, Edith takes Ava to the theater and leaves her tulips in the hallway. Ava wants to be her—and wants her.
And then Julian writes to tell Ava he is coming back to Hong Kong…. Should Ava return to the easy compatibility of her life with Julian or take a leap into the unknown with Edith?
Politically alert, heartbreakingly raw, and dryly funny, Exciting Times is thrillingly attuned to the great freedoms and greater uncertainties of modern love.
In stylish, uncluttered prose, Naoise Dolan dissects the personal and financial transactions that make up a life—and announces herself as a singular new voice. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Naoise Dolan is an Irish writer born in Dublin. She studied English literature at Trinity College Dublin and Oxford University. Exciting Times is her first novel, an excerpt from which was published in The Stinging Fly by Sally Rooney. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] wry and bracing tale of class and privilege…. Ava is hyper-verbal and exacting, and… [her] written correspondences—social media posts and emails she labors over, analyzes, doesn't send or sends by accident—become increasingly vulnerable in their disclosures…. They form a digital counterbalance to Ava's aloof and guarded in-person presence, and capture perfectly the nauseating insecurity of growing up today.
New York Times Book Review
In fewer than 250 pages, [Dolan] has captured the touchstone millennial tension between sardonicism and sincerity—the electric ambivalence of figuring out how to be a person in these times.… Exciting Times is a funny novel (both haha and weird), resisting the pull of melodrama in favor of a sharp point of view and… engaged with the ways class, inequality and politics manifest in social life.
Los Angeles Times
The prevailing experience of [Dolan’s] endeavor is one of invigoration. Exciting Times is… edifying, funny, tender, plangent and rich with the sensibility of an individual who, condemned to conditions that are not of her making, finds the space that she needs to take flight, and who proceeds as the person she was.
Seattle Times
I wouldn’t be surprised if it emerges as the book of the summer.… A rich, sharply witty story made out of the frictions and complexities of young love…. Kept me rapt until the final page.
The Times (UK)
A funny, smart, contemporary love story.
Sunday Times (UK)
A dazzling debut.… Dolan’s writing is precise, acerbic and enviably good, and her characters are perfectly drawn.
Evening Standard (UK)
Whipsmart…. A modern love story…. Exciting Times is an impressive, cerebral debut written with brio and humour… The observations are keen, heartfelt and delivered in a brutally nonchalant style…. Heralding for sure a new star in Irish writing.
Irish Times
A wonderfully sharp, comic writer, adept at making wisecracks in the caustic, knock-em-off, knock-em-down tradition of Dorothy Parker, Joan Rivers and Nora Ephron.… [Ava] is Bridget Jones’s sour sister, or Bridget Jones marinaded in vinegar…. I found myself purring with pleasure. I loved Exciting Times’s snap and its bite.… This is comic writing at the highest level.
Daily Mail (UK)
A love triangle like you've never seen it before.… Wry and sardonic, Dolan relentlessly examines untold truths about love, classicism, and ambition.
Marie Claire
Wry, stylish…. In this witty satire of the haves and have nots, Dolan explores tender, insightful truths about the vagaries of modern love.
Esquire
In Dolan’s wry, tender debut, a young Dubliner navigates her love life and sexuality.… Dolan’s smart, brisk debut works as charming comedy of manners, though it packs less of a punch when it comes to class consciousness.
Publishers Weekly
This delightfully sardonic, insightful debut picks apart life at the whims of the economy, love, and self-sabotage.… Overall, this surprising novel is believable and piercingly written —Henrietta Verma, Credo Reference, New York, NY
Library Journal
Volleying dialogue, rich interiority, and perceptive writing on money, politics, and class…. A clever and deep novel of sex, connection, and the complexities of self expression.
Booklist
A young millennial finds herself in a love triangle with a man and woman.… Dolan’s preoccupation with power is often couched in humor but always expertly observed. Her elegantly simple writing allows her ideas and musings to shine. A refreshingly wry and insightful debut.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for EXCITING TIMES … then take off on our own:
1. Do you find Ava a sympathetic character? At the beginning… by the end?
2. Author Naoise Dolan said in an NPR interview that Ava is a "somewhat repressed," young woman, who uses "dark humor as a coping device." What are some of the examples of her humor? Are there other coping mechanisms she uses?
3. In the same NPR interview, Dolan also says that Ava is much better at thinking analytically about "things" than she is at understanding her own, or others', emotions. Talk about how this tendency makes Ava an unreliable narrator.
4. How would you describe Ava and Julian's relationship? What, for instance, does Julian mean by this passage: "To be clear Ava: we're both dead behind the eyes, at least I can pay rent." And Ava thinks about Julian: "He doesn't want anyone to like him just for him" because he "wouldn't know what to do with the information." What do these statements and others reveal about the two of them—individually and as a couple?
5. What is your opinion of Edith? Were you frustrated by Ava's inability to commit?
6. The title of the book comes from Ava, who says, "We agree it was an exciting time to be alive." Is Ava being sarcastic? What is behind that comment, and why might Dolan have chosen it for the novel's title?
7. Talk about the role of class in this story. How do wealth and privilege, or their lack, evidence themselves?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)