Futures (Pitoniak)

The Futures 
Anna Pitoniak, 2017
Little, Btrown and  Co.
320  pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316354172


Summary
A young couple moves to New York City in search of success—only to learn that the lives they dream of may come with dangerous strings attached.

Julia and Evan fall in love as undergraduates at Yale.

For Evan, a scholarship student from a rural Canadian town, Yale is a whole new world, and Julia—blond, beautiful, and rich—fits perfectly into the future he's envisioned for himself.

After graduation, and on the eve of the great financial meltdown of 2008, they move together to New York City, where Evan lands a job at a hedge fund. But Julia, whose privileged upbringing grants her an easy but wholly unsatisfying job with a nonprofit, feels increasingly shut out of Evan's secretive world.

With the market crashing and banks failing, Evan becomes involved in a high-stakes deal at work—a deal that, despite the assurances of his Machiavellian boss, begins to seem more than slightly suspicious.

Meanwhile, Julia reconnects with someone from her past who offers a glimpse of a different kind of live. As the economy craters, and as Evan and Julia spin into their separate orbits, they each find that they are capable of much more—good and bad—than they'd ever imagined.

Rich in suspense and insight, Anna Pitoniak's gripping debut reveals the fragile yet enduring nature of our connections: to one another and to ourselves.

The Futures is a glittering story of a couple coming of age, and a searing portrait of what it's like to be young and full of hope in New York City, a place that so often seems determined to break us down—but ultimately may be the very thing that saves us. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1987-88
• Where—Whistler, Brtish Columbia, Canada
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, USA


Anna Pitoniak is an editor of fiction and nonfiction at Random House. She graduated from Yale in 2010, where she majored in English and was an editor at the Yale Daily News. She grew up in British Columbia. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Pitoniak maintains her keen eye for the universal insecurities facing her generation today, from romantic uncertainties and the relative benefits and downsides of hedge fund and nonprofit jobs to the emotional effort it requires to negotiate the predetermined facts of one's upbringing with the person one chooses to become.
Harper's Bazaar


This winter's cathartic read: a story that feels familiar yet wholly original, like every heartbreak ever.
Marie Claire


An emotional page-turner.
Cosmopolitan


Pitoniak's inspired debut centers on two recent college grads who move to New York City together during the 2008 recession and watch their relationship change drastically.
InStyle


Pitoniak eschews cliché for nuanced characterization and sharply observed detail. Evan and Julia ring true as 20-somethings, but Pitoniak’s novel also speaks to anyone who has searched among possible futures for the way back to what Julia calls “the person I had been all along.”
Publishers Weekly


This debut coming-of-age novel captures the insecurities of the first days of independent adulthood and the unintended consequences in the struggle for maturity. Readers of general fiction will enjoy this story. Recommended. —Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
Library Journal


Pitoniak's well-plotted, character-driven, interior-focused novel captures the knowable angst of the unknowable possibilities of modern young adulthood.
Booklist


Pitoniak expertly captures both the excitement and the oppressive darkness of being young and at sea in New York City.... And while the novel isn’t always subtle in its revelations, it’s deeply empathetic—and always engaging. A bittersweet coming-of-age drama and a portrait of an era.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Futures...then take off on your own:

1. Talk about the novel's two main characters, Julia and Evam, their admirable parts and their flaws. Neither one is a saint; still, do you find them sympathetic—one more so than the other? Or both equally?

2. What do Julie and Evan want out of life, and what does each want from the other? How do their different backgrounds shape their individual needs for fulfillment in life and in a relationship?

3. Julie becomes disillusioned after only a few months of job searching. Has she given herself enough time, or do you find her naive or even aimless? Does her entitled upbringing prompt her to see life through rose-tinted glasses, perhaps?

4. When do you begin to see the honeymoon period in New York begin to crack. Do you feel that one of the two feels more invested in the relationship than the other?

5. Consider how both Evan and Julia change over the course of the novel? What does each learn about him or herself and the world around them?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

top of page (summary)