What Is Wrong with You?
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Mar 25, 2025
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“The genuinely hilarious Paul Rudnick” (Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author) returns with a witty, insightful new novel about the joy, delight, pain, and absurdity of love in an age of cynicism, divorce, and digital madness.
A tech billionaire and the flight attendant he’s marrying. A TV superhero who used to be married to the flight attendant. A Manhattan book editor and the sensitivity associate who got him fired. A twenty-three-year-old wild child prodigy who’s perhaps the savior of American literature. A vengeful Arkansas sheriff who sells a vitamin-enriched, ten-pounds-off-today demulsifier. A Wall Street bro who raps on TikTok. Two dentists—possibly stalking each other.
What do these people have in common? Invited or not, they’re all headed to the most anticipated destination wedding ever, on the billionaire’s private island, to seek romance, to cause mayhem, and to figure out everyone else’s futures and maybe even their own.
Find out what happens in Paul Rudnick’s heartfelt new novel, which dares to pose the question essential to anyone who’s ever been in love: What Is Wrong with You?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this hilarious farce from Rudnick (Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style), a destination wedding goes extravagantly awry. Tech billionaire Trone Meston is set to marry his flight attendant fiancé, Linda Kleinschmidt, on Artemis Island, a private retreat he owns off the coast of Maine. Among the guests are Linda's bodybuilder ex-husband, Sean Manginaro, a former TV star who was "bodysurfing an ocean of nubile, pre-lubed, equally libidinous women" before he met Linda, and who misses the stability she provided. Also invited is Isabelle McNally, a sensitivity reader for a publishing company owned by Trone. She's followed to the island by literary wunderkind Tremble Woodspill, whose editor, Rob Barnett, lost his job after rejecting notes from Isabelle on Tremble's novel. Other interlopers include Rob's friend Paolo, who's attempting to evade a stalker he met on a gay dating app. As the weekend progresses, the subplots intersect in delightful fashion. Sean grows convinced Linda wants him back, Isabelle tries to get Trone for herself, and Tremble attempts to persuade Isabelle to help Rob get rehired. It's all carried along by Rudnick's delicious wit and keen eye for detail ("It's Ralph Lauren Prairie meets Embassy Suites in Akron," Paolo says of the lobby in Alchemy Hall, the island's estate and conference center). Readers will relish this comedy of errors.
