The Mutual Friend: A Novel

by Carter Bays Narrated by George Newbern

Overview

“This is a rare thing: an original, intelligent novel that's not just a perfect summer beach read, but one that deserves serious awards consideration as well. Put down your phone and pick it up. . . . A major accomplishment.”-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

From the co-creator of How I Met Your Mother, a hilarious and thought-provoking debut novel set in New York City, following an unforgettable cast of characters as they navigate life, love, loss, ambition, and spirituality-without ever looking up from their phones
 
It's the summer of 2015, and Alice Quick needs to get to work. She's twenty-eight years old, grieving her mother, barely scraping by as a nanny, and freshly kicked out of her apartment. If she can just get her act together and sign up for the MCAT, she can start chasing her dream of becoming a doctor . . . but in the Age of Distraction, the distractions are so distracting. There's her tech millionaire brother's religious awakening. His picture-perfect wife's emotional breakdown. Her chaotic new roommate's thirst for adventure. And, of course, there's the biggest distraction of all: love.
 
From within the story of one summer in one woman's life, a tapestry of characters is unearthed, tied to one another by threads both seen and unseen. Filled with all the warmth, humor, and heart that gained How I Met Your Mother its cult following, The Mutual Friend captures in sparkling detail the chaos of contemporary life-a life lived simultaneously in two different worlds, the physical one and the one behind our screens-and reveals how connected we all truly are.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

04/25/2022

Bays, the cocreator of the television show How I Met Your Mother, debuts with an unwieldy story involving a bunch of people whose lives occasionally intersect in New York City. Tech millionaire Bill Quick, developer of an app called MeWantThat, finds meaning in Buddhism, while his wife, Marianne, spends her time shopping for the perfect piece of high-priced real estate. Bill’s adopted sister, Alice—currently a nanny with aspirations to become a doctor—navigates the treacherous shoals of online dating. Generally, everyone is always on their phones, delivering an unsubtle message about the characters’ disconnection from real life. The bare-bones plot revolves primarily around Alice’s attempts to achieve her goals, and sprinkled in are light moments stemming from the comic value of characters such as the elderly, dick-pic-sending New York City mayor Spiderman (pronounced Speedermin), and of a dating app called Suitoronomy. But while Bays’s prose has a distinct flair, he tends to ramble, with the style haltingly alternating between pages-long run-on sentences and blocks of paragraphs with nothing but ellipses. Despite a few good gags, this doesn’t add up to much. (June)Correction: In an earlier version of this review, a character and a dating app were incorrectly described, and the mayor character was misnamed.

From the Publisher

Praise for The Mutual Friend

“A whip-smart comedy of manners for the era of buzzing gadgets.”
—The Washington Post

“Carter Bays is best known for the long-running sitcom How I Met Your Mother. His debut novel The Mutual Friend is like a sophisticated literary version, centering on a New York City–based ensemble with plenty to say about the discontents of modern life and the difficulty of connection.”
—NPR

“The first book I’ve read that effectively captures social media’s dominance in our love lives, and the humiliating experience of being online and yearning for attention. The Mutual Friend is gentle, warm, and the most I have laughed while reading this year.” 
—BuzzFeed, “25 Book Recommendations for the Holiday Season”

“The co-creator of How I Met Your Mother delivers delightful, unputdownable and legen—wait for it!—dary love stories in his debut novel.”
—E! News, “17 Books to Add to Your Beach Bag This June”

“This debut novel from the creator of How I Met Your Mother follows the intersecting lives of a few New Yorkers. A clever and all-seeing narrator (who is also a character) tells their stories, and it’s worth reading the book just to experience the satisfying ending, with everything fitting together just so.”
—Today.com, “30 of the Best Books to Sink into This Summer”

“Funny, sad, and deeply wise, this one-of-a-kind book will renew your faith in humanity—and make you really want to put down your phone.”
—Real Simple

“The Mutual Friend is GREAT. Carter Bays is one of the funniest people I know. More importantly, though, he always finds the heart and truth in all of his humor. I just loved it. Put down the phones. Unless you’re reading The Mutual Friend on it.”
—Jason Segel

“I love this love story! The dialogue is so good, also it's very funny. What more could I want?”
—Mindy Kaling

“An ecstatic debut . . . A modern epic brimming with charm; it romps between multiple concurrent storylines, but everything coalesces masterfully as all the scattered puzzle pieces fit together.”
—Emerson Malone, BuzzFeed

“This is a rare thing: an original, intelligent novel that’s not just a perfect summer beach read, but one that deserves serious awards consideration as well. Put down your phone and pick it up. . . . A major accomplishment.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“An imaginatively tender and uncannily exact tale of life on the internet. . . . The Mutual Friend is vast in scope, startling in its precise capture of the reality of intertwined digital lives, and satisfies its ambition with an unexpected humanity and vulnerability.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“The Mutual Friend is a stylized, laugh-out-loud funny social satire with devastating aim. . . . Like The Bonfire of the Vanities for the era of reality TV and social media . . . All told, it’s riveting.”
—BookPage (starred review)

“The How I Met Your Mother co-creator’s first book is as heartfelt and funny as his beloved show. Bays strikes the perfect balance between the laughs and tender moments. This modern love/friendship/finding yourself story is the perfect way to beat the heat this summer.”
—Debutiful

“The Mutual Friend is the most extraordinary and beguiling novel I’ve read in years. Carter Bays weaves together a huge, eclectic cast of messy, imperfect, and bewitching characters. . . . As soon as I put the book down, I wanted to start reading it all over again.”
—Clare Pooley, New York Times bestselling author of The Authenticity Project

“I know it sounds like a bad joke or weird curse to wonder what would happen if Charles Dickens or Bonfire of the Vanities–era Tom Wolfe had Twitter, but the actual, happy result would be The Mutual Friend—a novel of New York in a strange time that probes its large and foibled cast with humor, real insight, and sparkling charm.”
—John Hodgman, author of Vacationland and Medallion Status, and host of the Judge John Hodgman podcast

“The Mutual Friend is like a ten-course dinner party with your frankest, wittiest friends confiding all their secrets. It has plenty of full-on belly laughs, but also such granular emotional insight and sharp-eyed observations about modern life and love. This novel makes you feel wonderfully seen, at your best and at your worst, by somebody very kind and very, very funny, who points out all the foibles and fractures you thought nobody noticed and let’s you know you’re not alone.”
—Elan Mastai, author of All Our Wrong Todays

“The Mutual Friend is a big, heart-squeezing ode to all that matters most, dressed up in the disguise of a fun, juicy ensemble story bubbling over with comically bad dates, career missteps, and awkward adult friendships. You'll laugh; you'll cry; you'll stare out the window and contemplate the meaning of life. I did, anyway.”
—Mary Laura Philpott, author of I Miss You When I Blink and Bomb Shelter

“A hugely clever and thoroughly entertaining magic trick of a novel that shows the ways in which we’re all connected, both virtually and in real life. This book—with all its wisdom and humor, its detours and surprises—was a total delight. I loved it!”
—Jennifer E. Smith, author of The Unsinkable Greta James

“Poignant, heartbreaking, and full of hope. This beautifully written book perfectly captures the connections and relationships that shape our lives. I couldn't put it down.”
—Kate Spencer, author of In a New York Minute

“Through his tapestry of characters, Carter Bays beautifully and hilariously captures the connection and isolation at the heart of being a human being now. This book is like a modern-day War and Peace, without all the boring war parts.”
—Raphael Bob-Waksberg, author of Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory

“A completely unique and addictive read with a captivating cast of characters, The Mutual Friend is a memorable, clever novel about connection and love and all the things that make us human. Charming and unforgettable, this story left an impression on my heart.”
—Holly Miller, author of The Sight of You

“Original, modern, and charming.”
—Heat

Library Journal

01/01/2022

In Honey and Spice, following Babalola's buzzy debut story collection, Love in Color, young Black British woman Kiki Banjo—host of a popular student radio show and known for preaching bad-relationship avoidance—gets tangled in a fake liaison with the very guy she's been citing as big trouble. From Bays, co-creator of the Emmy Award-winning series How I Met Your Mother, 2015 New York-set The Mutual Friend features Alice Quick, mourning her mother, barely managing as a nanny, and trying to make herself sign up for the MCATs even as her tech millionaire brother experiences a religious awakening. In Blush author Brenner's latest, three sisters from a Gilt-edged family in the jewelry business are torn apart following a publicity stunt gone wrong, with one sister dying in a subsequent accident and her daughter struggling to regain traction within the family. In Coleman's Good Morning, Love, aspiring songwriter/musician Carlisa "Carli" Henton's efforts to keep her business and personal lives separate crumble when she meets rising hip-hop star Tau Anderson (50,000-copy first printing). From Egyptian-Irish BBC broadcaster El-Wardany, These Impossible Things features friends Malak, Kees, and Jenna, on the verge of adulthood as they struggle to be good Muslim women yet wanting to follow their dreams (50,000-copy first printing). In Fowler's It All Comes Down To This, three sisters—freelance journalist Beck, struggling with her marriage and a desire to write fiction; Claire, an accomplished pediatric cardiologist, recently divorced; and Sophie, leading a glamorous life she can't afford—face their mother's impending death and the fate of their beloved summer cottage on Mount Desert Island, ME. In Ho's Lucie Yi Is Not a Romantic, a follow-up to the LJ-starred Last Tang Standing, a hardworking career woman gives up on finding the right guy after her fiancé calls off their marriage and signs up for an elective co-parenting website so that she can have a baby—with unexpected consequences. In USA Today best-selling Moore's latest, Maine is not exactly Vacationland for Louisa when she visits her parents one summer with her three children, as she's dealing with an unfinished book, an absentee husband, and a father suffering from Alzheimer's, plus a young stranger in town trying to get her own life in order (100,000-copy first printing). In popular Patrick's The Messy Life of Book People, Liv Green forms a tentative friendship with the mega-best-selling author for whom she works as a housecleaner but is surprised when the author dies suddenly and in her will asks that Liv complete her final book (75,000 paperback and 10,000-copy paperback first printing). In Saint X author Schaitkin's Elsewhere, an interesting departure, Vera grows up in a small town where for generations women keep vanishing mysteriously (200,000-copy first printing). Vercher follows the Edgar-nominated, best-booked Three-Fifths with After the Lights Go Out, about a biracial MMA fighter aging out of his career and facing his father's end-stage Alzheimer's when he scores a last-minute comeback fight. Already a multi-award winner, Wolfe debuts with Last Summer on State Street, about Felicia "Fe Fe" Stevens and two close-as-hugging friends—a happy threesome that expands to an uneasy foursome even as the Chicago Housing Authority prepares to tear down the high-rise in the projects where Fe Fe's family lives (50,000-copy first printing).

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2022-04-13
Several New Yorkers struggle to put down their phones in this debut comic novel.

There’s an abundance of characters in Bays’ novel, and almost none of them know what they want. There’s Alice, a 28-year-old nanny who thinks she wants to go to medical school but takes forever to register for the MCAT. There’s her new roommate, Roxy, a 34-year-old Manic Pixie flibbertigibbet with a City Hall job whose desires are even more amorphous: “Roxy wanted what she wanted to want, nothing more, nothing less.” Alice’s brother, Bill, is at loose ends after leaving MeWantThat, the shopping app he founded; he takes a sudden interest in Buddhism, which is met with skepticism by his wife, Pitterpat, who “made an activity of wanting” but also seems to realize that the tony real estate she covets won’t fill the emptiness inside her. The lives of the four characters (and several more, who move in and out of the novel) are all thrown into disarray when Roxy becomes embroiled in a scandal that transfixes the internet, Pitterpat gets diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, and Bill impulsively makes a sudden, drastic life change. Throughout the novel, the characters wrestle with their addictions to their smartphones and social media: “Something’s happened to my brain,” Alice laments. “I don’t know what it is. But I think it has to do with this phone I can’t stop looking at every thirty fucking seconds.” Bays was a co-creator of the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, so it’s no surprise his novel is highly comic—sometimes darkly so. (The characters watch a reality show called Love on the Ugly Side, one episode of which forces the contestants to watch “deepfake videos of their parents having sex in order to win a couple’s massage.”) What is surprising is how beautifully written it is and how deftly the author balances humor and heartbreak. Bays writes with real compassion that never turns sentimental, and the structure of the book, told from the point of view of a mysterious omniscient narrator, is ingenious. This is a rare thing: an original, intelligent novel that’s not just a perfect summer beach read, but one that deserves serious awards consideration as well. Put down your phone and pick it up.

A major accomplishment.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176162721
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	06/07/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

 

Constellations

 

What did the Buddhist monk say to the hot dog vendor?

 

This is the problem with telling yourself jokes: Nothing's funny when you know the punch line. And I know the punch line because I know all the punch lines because I know all. I know all. I see all. These are the facts, and the facts make me all. Make me the storyteller. Make me the listener. Make me the campfire. Make me the stars.

 

On a June day in the high fever of this century's messy teenage years, a man died in Central Park. He was walking to work, earbuds in, ambling through a shuffle of his entire music library, when he came to the bike path, which wasn't so much a path as a ribbon of black pavement winding through the greenery. He looked both ways and, seeing no one coming, started across, but then, halfway to the other side, a breeze reminded him his hair was getting a little long, so he stopped, right in the middle of the road, and opened the to-do list on his phone. He looked down into his hand, his thumb going doot doot doot, and somewhere between the fifth and sixth doot, a blue ten-speed bicycle came coursing around the blind and practically sliced the poor fellow in half.

 

People ran over to help, but there was nothing they could do. The man's earbuds were still in, and as it all began to slip, the song ended and into the shuffle he went. Celestial strings lifted him, pulling him into the sky as Nat King Cole sang "Stardust" through a microphone in 1957 into the man's ears in 2015. The man didn't want this song, and his last impulse was to skip ahead but then he skipped ahead himself, from this world into the next, and the song went on, and "Haircu" is still on his to-do list.

 

"I don't want to say it was the guy's fault," said Kervis later that day as he loomed over Roxy's cubicle in the City Hall press office, "but he was playing on his phone in the middle of the bike path. I mean, it's sad, but dude, come on."

 

Roxy agreed it was sad.

 

"Second one this year. And it's only June," he continued. "We'll probably have to close the bike lanes. And yes, I'm sure we'll get complaints from the Pedalers' Alliance. But if people keep getting run over by bicycles, what can those guys do really, you know?"

 

Roxy shrugged, not knowing what those guys could do really.

 

"Anyway," he said. "I was thinking maybe we could have, like, a citywide campaign to get pedestrians to look up from their phones. Like 'Heads Up New York.' Or 'Look Up New York.' Or 'Look Around New York.' Something like that."

 

Roxy said one of those was perfect.

 

"Which one?" he asked. "Roxy?"

 

Roxy looked up from her phone. "Yes, Kervis?"

 

"Which one was perfect?"

 

"Um," she replied. "Say them again?"

 

He did.

 

"Middle one, definitely."

 

It bothered Kervis that his assistant Roxy's opinion mattered so much to him. It also bothered him that she wasn't actually his assistant. She was below him in the chain of command, and he could tell her to do stuff, but she wasn't exclusively his, and this bothered him. It also bothered him that she was bad at her job. She never paid attention, didn't seem to care about the work, probably didn't even vote for the mayor, and dressed unprofessionally. Today's overalls were no exception. She was a bad hire, and this also bothered Kervis because he was the one who'd hired her. And most of all it bothered him that she was pretty. Getting prettier every day, in fact. The overalls had something to do with it.

 

"Anyhoo," he said, "I should get down there. Sounds like the big guy's in a mood. This might go late. Are you okay sticking around?"

 

She was. Kervis left, and for forty-five minutes, Roxy didn't move from her desk chair in the empty bullpen of the press office. The lower half of her body swiveled lazily back and forth like the cattail pendulum of a clock, but the rest of her remained still, her elbows anchored to the desk, her phone in her hands, her face in her phone. She didn't mind being here. Had she left an hour earlier, she'd just be doing this at her kitchen table instead of her office desk. Whether she was at home in her apartment or here in City Hall, it didn't matter, because wherever Roxy happened to be, she was never really there.

 

Instead she was here. Here, bicycle accidents were no matter for concern. Here, nothing mattered and everything twinkled and everyone buzzed about the premiere of a new reality show called Love on the Ugly Side, which sounded just awful and stupid and Roxy couldn't wait to see it when she got home, but for now she kept moving, because there was more to see, because there was always more to see. A married politician got caught with his mistress and she was amused, until a child with a disability climbed to the top of a rock wall and she was hopeful, until a friend announced he'd bought his first home and she was jealous, until an article confirmed the seas were rising and she was scared, until a panda got a bucket stuck on his head and she LOL'd, and so on and so on, each emotion erasing its predecessor from the dry-erase board of her mind. An earthquake hit Los Angeles. "Anyone else feel that?" "Yowza!" Roxy felt concerned, until, further down, a celebrity whose makeup tutorials she loved retweeted a link to Blueberry Muffins or Chihuahuas, and Roxy followed that link and it took her over here, to a series of photos, some of Chihuahuas, some of blueberry muffins, and the blueberry muffins looked like Chihuahuas, and the Chihuahuas looked like blueberry muffins, and she was asked by the page to guess which was which, and Roxy laughed out loud, and out there, outside of her phone, her soft giggle scurried across the bright empty bullpen like a mouse.

 

Then she felt an urge. Maybe the big blueberry eyes of the Chihuahuas stirred some procreational itch. Maybe the muffins made her mouth water. Whatever it was, something in the bottom of her stomach or the back of her brain gave the old familiar tug, and Roxy found her way over here, to Suitoronomy, where she met Bob.

 

Bob had seen her first, and he liked her immediately. Why wouldn't he? She was beautiful here, the best of all possible Roxies. Here she wasn't that baggy-eyed girl from the press office, the one in the overalls. Here she was exquisite, in a dress and makeup from three New Year's Eves ago, when she was fresher and newer and weighed less and slept more. Here, her emphatic red curls were not hidden under a hat or straitjacketed into a ponytail. Here, they spread like fireworks around her, and she smiled a multitudinous smile for everything all at once: a smile for a new year, a smile for a camera, a smile for a photographer, a smile for everyone in the room, a smile for everyone in the world, and finally, here, a smile just for Bob. Bob saw the smile and the hair and the dress, and he must have known he wanted her, because with a flick of his thumb, just a calorie of work, he gathered up this want and sent it crackling out of his brain and into Roxy's world, setting into motion everything that would follow.

 

That had been an hour ago. Now Roxy opened up Suitoronomy, and there was Bob, cheerful dimply Bob, looking up at her from the palm of her hand, wanting her. He was handsome, but everyone here was handsome. They were all as handsome as the handsomest picture they had of themselves, and there was no better picture of Bob in the universe than this one right here. His hair had never been combed better in its life. The historic hair day, the charming smile, and the fact that she knew he liked her was enough for Roxy. Another calorie of work, and both their phones rattled and chirped to announce it: They liked each other.

 

Roxy didn't hear from him right away. When Kervis finally returned to the press office crowing that the big guy seemed to like "Look Up New York," she quietly packed up her things and went home. On the subway uptown to Morningside Heights, she forgot about Bob. She checked the weather, she watched videos of makeup disasters, she parsed a few more blueberry muffins from Chihuahuas, and she flirted with three other men. Bob had swum away from the lagoon of her attention and now dog-paddled in the back of her brain with everyone else.

 

But then, that night, as she lay, half stoned, watching and high-key loving the first episode of Love on the Ugly Side, her phone lit up. It was Bob.

 

He said, "Can I be honest?"

 

Roxy was too tired to flirt. She went to sleep, and in the morning, still thinking he was cute, replied while brushing her teeth. She tried to think of some funny retorts before deciding that even though he was cute, he wasn't so cute that she'd spend all morning worrying about what she said to him, and besides, she was late for work, so she simply said, "Sure. Be honest."

 

"Okay," he batted back quickly. "I'll just tell you. You're my first."

 

"Your first?"

 

"My very first."

 

"Your first what?"

 

"My first one of these. My first match. The first person I've talked to on this thing. I'm brand new at this." Then, a little later, "How'm I doing?"

 

By now she was back at her desk downtown. She was busy, but she spared a moment to keep the ball in the air. "So great," she replied. "You're a natural."

 

"Haha, thanks. Yeah I'd never done one of these apps before, so I wanted to see what it was like. I made the little profile, and filled out the thing, I hope this picture's okay. And then I started playing with it and the very first face that came up was you. Yours. So here I am. I'm Bob, by the way. I like your dress."

 

"I'm Roxy," she replied. "Thank you."

 

The dots appeared. He was writing more. She looked at his profile. Bob, 40, has matched with you. She cut him off. "Are you divorced, Bob?"

 

The dots went away as something was erased. Then the dots reappeared, and then: "No. Why, do I seem divorced? Haha."

 

"Still married then? Sneaking around?"

 

"No, I'm not married. I've never been married."

 

"You seem a little defensive, Bob. It's okay, I'm not judging. Life is long. People get bored."

 

Another long interval of three dots. So much being written and erased, written and erased, and finally all that arrived was: "I'm not married."

 

"Okay, I believe you," she said. He didn't reply. An hour later she was at lunch, working through a salad, rubbing a drying fleck of kale from her teeth, when it occurred to her to say more. "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to judge you or anything. Just seems a little weird that you'd be new at this."

 

"I guess I'm weird then," he said quickly.

 

"Did you just get out of a longterm relationship?"

 

"No."

 

"Are you still in a longterm relationship?"

 

Bit of a pause after that one, but then: "No."

 

"Well I don't mean to harp on it but I don't get how you could spend forty years as an unmarried person on planet earth, and not once be lonely enough or even curious enough to go on a dating app." She suddenly realized she was putting way too much effort into this conversation. Did she really care all that much? She went elsewhere. Chihuahua. Chihuahua. Blueberry muffin.

 

"I guess I thought I wouldn't need to," he replied. "I thought I'd meet someone nice in real life. At work or something. Or at a party, or through friends. I counted on that happening, for a long time. And then . . . it just didn't. So here I am."

 

Roxy read this in an empty subway car. There was something entertaining about his earnestness. "Is that why you're here, Bob? To meet someone nice?"

 

"Isn't that why everybody's here?"

 

"I think most people are here for something else, Bob."

 

"What's that?"

 

Roxy replied with a series of emojis, fruits and vegetables mostly.

 

"Ah," he said. "Of course." A moment later, he dared this reply: "And what are you here for?"

 

Roxy smiled. She started to write the honest answer: a series of emojis, fruits and vegetables mostly. She didn't want a boyfriend. Maybe, at some point down the road, she would want a boyfriend, maybe she'd want more than a boyfriend, and if that day ever came, she wouldn't be conflicted about it, wouldn't feel like a hypocrite, because that was down the road and this was right now, and right now, as in every right now she'd ever lived, Roxy wanted what she wanted to want, nothing more, nothing less.

 

She thought of something her old friend Carissa had said when they were on vacation together in Cozumel, before Carissa got married and her husband made her stop hanging out with Roxy. They were at this bar by the beach, and some guy had been hitting on her all night, and he asked her what she was looking for in a man, and she said, "I'm looking for a husband. Someone else's, preferably!" Roxy and the other girls had laughed so hard at that. Carissa had a four-year-old now. There were first-day-of-preschool pictures on her Facebook page. Carissa was gone from Roxy's life. No harm in stealing the line.

 

"I'm looking for a husband," she said to Bob, and then she paused, because the pause was important for the timing, but then, when she typed out "someone else's preferably" and added a winky face, it kind of felt gross, and she thought maybe she was wording it wrong because it didn't seem as funny as when Carissa had said it. Maybe it was funnier out loud when everyone's drunk, so maybe she'd word it a different way, and then the subway screeched to a stop and her phone flew out of her hands and slid like a hockey puck down the length of the car, coming to rest in a puddle, substance unknown.

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