In post-9/11 New York City, a lonely young man poses as his missing neighbor’s grief-stricken boyfriend—and soon becomes entangled in her fractured family. 

Stoop-shouldered and balding beneath a porkpie hat, Jonah Soloway is an old man before his time. Effectively orphaned when an SUV took his mother’s life, he has retreated into a solitary world of vintage artifacts and comic books. But he longs to make a human connection—even if it means twisting the truth to get it. When he dials the number on Rose Oliveri’s 9/11 missing poster and reaches her mother, Vivian, one innocent lie leads to another, and before Jonah knows it, reality becomes uncertain even to him.

Stalked by Rose’s ghost, Jonah finds himself falling deeper into his own fabrications as he wanders a city turned surreal in terrorism’s settling dust. But when he meets Jane, an irreverent student of psychoanalysis, he’ll be forced to choose between illusion and the possibility of a true relationship.

Both a poetic journey into the heart of post-9/11 New York and a darkly comic commentary on how we cope with loss, The Nostalgist is a striking debut novel from a masterful new author.