author of Confidence and The Comedown RAFAEL FRUMKIN
Nash Jenkins’s preternatural understanding of America’s upper class lets us see what’s really going on beneath all those layers of Ralph Lauren and Yves St. Laurent. Full of teenaged yearning and the myths we make long into adulthood, Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos delivers on its ambition—and then some.
author of Vladimir JULIA MAY JONAS
A fresh and acutely observed portrait of a modern young man. Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos throbs with candor and longing.
CNN STYLE
"Dade’s hormone-fueled relationships with classmates and exploration of the pitfalls of masculinity create an engrossing coming of age sequel of sorts to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History."
THE NATIONAL BOOK REVIEW
"If Holden Caulfield had been dropped into the Obama era, he might be Foster Dade, the protagonist of Jenkins’ exhilarating debut novel . . . [Full] of wit, enriched by social insights about class, masculinity, and adolescence. . . An enduring story of adolescents struggling to find the narratives they wish to tell."
author of Broken People SAM LANSKY
In this striking debut, Nash Jenkins captures the rarefied world of an East Coast boarding school with uncanny specificity. But in mining this privileged milieu, Jenkins unearths something universal: An exploration of the teenage tendency to self-mythologize that’s funny, heartbreaking, and real.
summer reading recommendation CHICAGO MAGAZINE
A transfer to a New Jersey boarding school falls in with two social heavy hitters and gets expelled. The student who moves into his old dorm room tries to figure out why. This debut novel . . . is a late-aughts period piece — think BlackBerrys and Vampire Weekend — with prep-school-scandal bones.”
The Guardian CURTIS SITTENFELD
Juicy . . . Jenkins [is a] huge new literary talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stylistic flourishes in the form of playlists, legal papers, and entries from Foster’s blog provide a convincing...panorama of the school’s microcosm . . . Jenkins proves to be a keen world builder and a mostly engaging raconteur.”
a must-read book selection CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS
A compelling mystery that uncovers the harmful reaches of privilege, power, and toxic masculinity . . . Jenkins’s writing is a joy to read, with plenty of humor and intense emotional reckonings that come with growing up in the early years of the twenty-first century.
KIRKUS REVIEWS
Ambitious . . . [A] finely observed account of teen angst and awkward sex in an academically demanding environment marked by privilege and cliques and the cruelty they breed.”
Best New Books for Summer 2023 THE BOSTON GLOBE
A New England boarding school whodunit set in the early aughts, Foster Dade unfolds in an unlikely way, including through blog posts and playlists that capture the teen angst of the early internet era, before we were all so intertwined with each other.
From the Publisher
Juicy . . . Jenkins [is a] huge new literary talent.” —CURTIS SITTENFELD, The Guardian
“A New England boarding school whodunit set in the early aughts, Foster Dade unfolds in an unlikely way, including through blog posts and playlists that capture the teen angst of the early internet era, before we were all so intertwined with each other.”—THE BOSTON GLOBE, Best New Books for Summer 2023
"If Holden Caulfield had been dropped into the Obama era, he might be Foster Dade, the protagonist of Jenkins’ exhilarating debut novel . . . [Full] of wit, enriched by social insights about class, masculinity, and adolescence. . . An enduring story of adolescents struggling to find the narratives they wish to tell."
—THE NATIONAL BOOK REVIEW
“Stylistic flourishes in the form of playlists, legal papers, and entries from Foster’s blog provide a convincing...panorama of the school’s microcosm . . . Jenkins proves to be a keen world builder and a mostly engaging raconteur.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Ambitious . . . [A] finely observed account of teen angst and awkward sex in an academically demanding environment marked by privilege and cliques and the cruelty they breed.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“A compelling mystery that uncovers the harmful reaches of privilege, power, and toxic masculinity . . . Jenkins’s writing is a joy to read, with plenty of humor and intense emotional reckonings that come with growing up in the early years of the twenty-first century.”—CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS, a must-read book selection
“A transfer to a New Jersey boarding school falls in with two social heavy hitters and gets expelled. The student who moves into his old dorm room tries to figure out why. This debut novel . . . is a late-aughts period piece — think BlackBerrys and Vampire Weekend — with prep-school-scandal bones.”
—CHICAGO MAGAZINE, summer reading recommendation
"Dade’s hormone-fueled relationships with classmates and exploration of the pitfalls of masculinity create an engrossing coming of age sequel of sorts to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History."—CNN STYLE
“In this striking debut, Nash Jenkins captures the rarefied world of an East Coast boarding school with uncanny specificity. But in mining this privileged milieu, Jenkins unearths something universal: An exploration of the teenage tendency to self-mythologize that’s funny, heartbreaking, and real.”—SAM LANSKY, author of Broken People
“Nash Jenkins’s preternatural understanding of America’s upper class lets us see what’s really going on beneath all those layers of Ralph Lauren and Yves St. Laurent. Full of teenaged yearning and the myths we make long into adulthood, Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos delivers on its ambition—and then some.”—RAFAEL FRUMKIN, author of Confidence and The Comedown
“A fresh and acutely observed portrait of a modern young man. Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos throbs with candor and longing.”—JULIA MAY JONAS, author of Vladimir
New York Times bestselling author of Pr CURTIS SITTENFELD (via twitter)
Smart, and complex, and poignant.
Rafael Frumkin
Nash Jenkins’s preternatural understanding of America’s upper class lets us see what’s really going on beneath all those layers of Ralph Lauren and Yves St. Laurent. Full of teenaged yearning and the myths we make long into adulthood, Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos delivers on its ambition—and then some.
Sam Lansky
In this striking debut, Nash Jenkins captures the rarefied world of an East Coast boarding school with uncanny specificity. But in mining this privileged milieu, Jenkins unearths something universal: An exploration of the teenage tendency to self-mythologize that’s funny, heartbreaking, and real.
Julia May Jonas
A fresh and acutely observed portrait of a modern young man. Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos throbs with candor and longing.
Kirkus Reviews
2023-03-28
This ambitious debut covers 15 months of a teenage boy’s prep school yearnings and traumas.
The novel’s Kennedy School is a costly coed facility modeled on Lawrenceville, also in New Jersey, from which Jenkins graduated in 2011. His narrator is a Kennedy alumnus who decides to trace the rise and fall 10 years earlier of Foster Dade, who became a school legend mainly for his expulsion for dealing Adderall and other stimulating “study drugs.” Foster is a smart, sensitive kid who’s having panic attacks about not fitting in at Kennedy. He starts selling drugs, initially prescribed by his therapist, to classmates seeking to improve their academic and athletic performance or just to supplement the buzz they usually get from booze and cocaine. (Yes, they’re only 15 and 16, but make allowances for big allowances.) Eventually he acquires a major supplier and customers on 17 campuses. He also finds friendship and affection, but several epic binges reveal a darker side of coolness, hookups, and chemically induced euphoria. Jenkins weaves through his disjointed narrative a finely observed account of teen angst and awkward sex in an academically demanding environment marked by privilege and cliques and the cruelty they breed. The disjointedness stems from a pretense of reportage set up in the alumnus narrator’s almost comically overwritten preface (“the loose nebula of half-truths has unfurled under the myth-making tendencies of time”). His intrusive commentary often interrupts the story as he explains how he knows what he knows, expanding on interviews, citing medical records. Then there are the textual jolts of age-appropriate, social media–savvy elements: Facebook threads, iChats, phone texts, iTunes playlists, and Foster’s online diary. It’s possible that Jenkins—who refers several times to coverage by Vanity Fair and other media—is aiming for a pastiche of the exposés such periodicals trot out in the wake of an eminent school’s scandal. If so, his novel suggests that fiction has a better chance of getting at more of the truth.
A complex, sometimes confusing work by a talented writer.
