Down Time - by Andrew Martin (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A terribly funny and lovably louche novel about five friends growing older, if not always up, from Andrew Martin, author of Early Work and Cool for America"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

A terribly funny and lovably louche novel about five friends growing older, if not always up, from Andrew Martin, author of Early Work and Cool for America.

Without Cassandra, Aaron would probably be dead. Fortunately, she won't leave him--despite the drinking, flirting, solipsism, armchair socialism, overspending, infidelity, catastrophic depression, and disparate but increasingly frequent spells of drug- and booze-addled debauchery. Unfortunately, she might be reaching the end of her rope.

Cass and Aaron, like the other neurotic, ambivalent intellectuals in their orbit, are getting older. There's Malcolm, with his own alcoholism and marginally more successful writing career; his partner, Violet, a doctor with little patience for either; Antonia, a teaching fellow whose book about ecocide may get her tenure at a prestigious university near Harvard Square--yes, that one. When Sam, a charming trust-fund punk at the center of this loose network, dies suddenly and a global pandemic takes hold, all five must contend with the lives they've made: their desires and disappointments, habits and hang-ups, pathologies and addictions, and the possibilities of making art and being good as the earth whirls to its end.

Down Time marks the delightful return of Andrew Martin, the author of the pitch-perfect slacker classics Early Work and Cool for America. Compulsively readable and contagiously intelligent, this is a wryly comic novel of settling down, selling out, growing up, and getting out that turns a terrifically funny and hyperliterate eye on our most desperately guarded ambitions: to love and be loved, to know and be known, to stay sane, if only just.

Review Quotes

"An unbridled sense of creative mischief permeates Down Time, perpetrated by both the author's sparkling prose and the characters themselves . . . The pleasure of this book comes from reading perfectly rendered sentence after perfectly rendered sentence . . . Endlessly entertaining."
--Adam Straus, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Keenly observed and fitfully propulsive . . . Extremely funny, which is not easy on the page. Many lines zing."
--Ben Greenman, The New York Times Book Review

"Down Time is the first novel I've encountered that vividly evokes the pre-vaccine months without falling into the usual traps . . . Sharp, off-kilter, and particular . . . He achieves this not through satire--a crude tool ill-suited to a subject as tricky as the pandemic--but through acute psychological observation."
-Lily Meyer, The Atlantic

"Martin's best and biggest book so far, a clever, rigorous, and relentlessly, unfortunately, accurate portrait of how it is to be alive and in your thirties . . . To Martin's great credit . . . he manages to avoid the pitfalls of the genre, and instead use the trappings of the story we all know too well to tell us something very specific about a few imaginary people, and something very universal about our own real selves."
--Emily Temple, Literary Hub (Most Anticipated)

"This sharp new novel from the cult-favorite author of Early Work is about two 'neurotic, ambivalent intellectuals' and their friends: professors, artists, anti-Establishment types with money. As the pandemic bears down, their problems--with addiction, with sex, with relationships--begin to become untenable."
--Emma Alpern, Vulture (Most Anticipated)

"Andrew Martin's first novel, Early Work, marked him as a droll chronicler of what it means to be young, frequently lustful, and offhandedly intent on leading a literary life . . . The sexual entanglements are elaborate and fearlessly described; so too are the perils of substance addiction and depression. The novel zips by."
--Taylor Antrim, Vogue (Best Books of 2026)

"Martin writes about his characters with a mix of affection and bemusement . . . He has an impressive psychological insight . . . Crucially, this is also a very funny novel . . . Wonderfully charming . . . Another impressive book by one of the country's most talented authors of comic fiction."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Moving and funny and gorgeously written. For all its aching sadness, Down Time is a thrill to read, the sentences somehow bold and vulnerable all at once. I'll say it: Martin has written The Corrections for his generation."
--Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams

"Down Time is a beautiful, weird, pervy, funny novel about everything that happens when it feels like nothing is happening. Andrew Martin has managed to capture the simultaneously absurd and moving nature of the present. So many moments made me laugh out loud while also thinking, 'My god, this is so sad.' I loved this book!"
--Halle Butler, author of Banal Nightmare and The New Me

"Andrew Martin is a wildly gifted writer of relationships. He renders the quiet, daily parts of coexistence in a way that feels exciting, uncomfortable, and humane. Down Time is decadent, funny, and vivid about the way a relationship can be a strange shared consciousness."
--Raven Leilani, author of Luster

"Andrew Martin is a razor-sharp chronicler of the lives, loves, and disappointed longings of a generation hungry for meaning but forced to subsist on a diet of gigs and vibes. With rare skill and a superabundance of insight, he holds a wittier, more incisive mirror up to people like you and me and details the inner facets of their souls--and, most importantly, what happens when what's hidden is revealed to the people they hold close."
--Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun

"Down Time is effortlessly cool, wise, witty, and full of compassion--it should be blasted into space so that extraterrestrials, or our future descendants on Mars, know how privileged-but-adrift millennials lived and felt about being alive. Andrew Martin makes the exhaustion of our utterly fucked moment in history new, like it's something you could sharpen yourself against. This is his best book yet."
--Christine Smallwood, author of The Life of the Mind

About the Author

Andrew Martin is the author of the novel Early Work, a New York Times Notable Book of 2018, and the story collection Cool for America, which was long-listed for the 2020 Story Prize. His essays and stories have appeared frequently in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, and Harper's Magazine, as well as in The Yale Review, The Atlantic, McSweeney's, The Times Book Review, and elsewhere. He teaches in Brooklyn and New Hampshire, and lives in New York City with his family.