Description
Book SynopsisIt's really a very simple story. What happened was this: I met this girl and did a very stupid thing. I fell in love. Hard. I know that to some people that makes me an idiot and a loser. What can I say? They're right. I did some extremely foolish things; I'm the first to say it. And they've left me in jail and alone."So begins one of the most compelling, emotionally charged, and affecting novels you are likely to read this year.It is the summer of 1968 and a young man takes a job at a camp in upstate New York before starting his first semester at Columbia University. There, he meets Rachel Price, a fellow counselor who is as beautiful as she is haunted. Their romance will burn with a passion neither of them has ever known before...a passion with the power to destroy.In the tradition of Endless Love and Gone Girl, What it was Like is an intimate, raw, and revealing journey through the landscape of all-consuming love. It announces the debut of a remarkable storyteller.
Trade Review"My obsession with What it Was Like is identical to the one the story's wry, intelligent, and completely unremorseful narrator has for the beautiful, sexually intoxicating and mesmerizing Rachel Prince, with whom he begins a romance that we know from the opening pages is ill-fated. Once I started reading, I had to finish the book as fast as I could. Reading What is Was Like made me experience all the joys -- and dangers -- of teenage lust with an immediacy that I haven't felt since Splendor in the Grass." -- Stan Chervin, Screenwriter, Academy Award nominee for Moneyball "What It Was Like is a story about all kinds of love -- the obsessive first love of two unforgettable teenagers as well as the layers of love that can lie in tortuous wait between parents and children, a love as deep and hidden as an ominous quarry. If indeed you've ever wondered what kind of parents J.D. Salinger and Patricia Highsmith would have made if they had gotten together, then look no further than Peter Seth, their literary progeny." -- Kevin Sessums, author, Mississippi Sissy and editor in chief, FourTwoNine magazine "I was the world's rudest houseguest the weekend I brought along What It Was Like. From the opening chapter, I could not look away until I had read through to the stunning (and heartbreaking!) final pages. Peter Seth has done a wickedly skillful job of storytelling." -- Kate Klimo, Author of The Dragon Keepers and The Dog Diaries "Not like anything else I have read, this stark and frightening tale will stay with me for some time to come." -- Cayacosta 72
