You Don't Love This Man - by Dan Deweese (Paperback)

About the Book

Deweese delivers a witty, heartfelt, and keenly observed debut novel about marriage, fatherhood, and bank robbery.

Book Synopsis

"You Don't Love This Man is an exquisite puzzle....Which is more gorgeous, more satisfying here, the story itself, or the language DeWeese uses to tell it?" --Mary Rechner, author of Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women

Set in the Pacific Northwest, Dan Deweese's debut novel delivers a witty, heartfelt, and keenly observed day-in-the-life of one father of the bride, casting luminous insight into marriage, fatherhood, and bank robbery. Readers of Benjamin Kunkel, Joshua Ferris, and Kevin Wilson, as well as fans of contemporary American masters like Philip Roth and Tobias Wolff, will be enthralled by Deweese's evocative, literary exploration of an everyman protagonist's quiet struggles and tender joys on one of the most monumental days in his life.

From the Back Cover

A novel about fatherhood, marriage . . . and bank robbery.

On the morning of his daughter Miranda's wedding, Paul learns that the bank he manages has been robbed--apparently by the same man who robbed it twenty-five years before. As if that weren't enough, Miranda, who is set to marry Paul's former best friend--a man twice her age--seems to have gone missing.

Struggling to reconcile his little girl with the grown woman he's about to walk down the aisle (if he can find her), to accept his onetime peer as his future son-in-law, and to comprehend the strange coincidence of being robbed by the same man two decades apart, Paul takes stock of everything leading up to this moment--as he attempts to navigate the day's many surprises while questioning the motives and choices of those around him.

Review Quotes

"Dan DeWeese's elegantly written novel tells the story--alternately joyful and heartbreaking--of a father coming to terms with what he's made of his life. It's one of those novels I know I'll return to, and pass on, in admiration and delight." - Lauren Grodstein, author of A Friend of the Family
"You Don't Love This Man is an exquisite puzzle. The men in this novel are observant, articulate, driven, and confused. The women are fully realized, smart, fashionable, and frustrated. Does one sex think more clearly? Is one two steps ahead? Amidst various mysteries (including a bank robbery) we find bittersweet clarity: a father loves his daughter, the girl he knows he must lose. This remarkable first novel gives rise to another, purely pleasurable conundrum. Which is more gorgeous, more satisfying here, the story itself, or the language DeWeese uses to tell it?" - Mary Rechner, author of Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women
"At one point, the narrator of Dan DeWeese's You Don't Love This Man, tells us, 'No one particularly cares about the thoughts of bank managers.' No reader who spends time with this particular bank manager will be able to agree. Oddly tense and ultimately, cleansingly sad, YDLTM wrings an amazing amount of pathos out of one (only seemingly) ordinary life." - Tom Bissell, author of The Father of All Things
"The careful, unpretentious opening of You Don't Love This Man can't possibly belie the cataclysm of interpersonal drama it contains. . . . The story has left me in that strange place between emotional exhaustion and raw, refreshed excitement for life. This amazing novel is why novels exist." - Patrick Somerville, author of The Cradle
"In this assiduous, mysterious novel of a father's doings on his daughter's wedding day, Dan DeWeese gives us a portrait of one man's alienation, self-doubt, passivity, and, ultimately, his redeeming passion. With admirable formal restraint and unyielding sympathy, DeWeese delivers a whole adult life in a day." - Jon Raymond, author of Livability
"Oddly tense and ultimately, cleansingly sad, You Don't Love This Man wrings an amazing amount of pathos out of one (only seemingly) ordinary life." - Tom Bissell, author of The Father of All Things
"You Don't Love This Man is an exquisite puzzle. . . . This remarkable first novel gives rise to another, purely pleasurable conundrum. Which is more gorgeous, more satisfying here, the story itself, or the language DeWeese uses to tell it?" - Mary Rechner, author of Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women