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WORK TITLE: How to Leave the House
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WEBSITE: https://www.nathannewmanrules.com/
CITY: London
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COUNTRY: United Kingdom
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Author and filmmaker.
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How to Leave the House is being adapted for television.
SIDELIGHTS
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Nathan Newman is a filmmaker and author based in London, England. He has had numerous short stories published in a variety of anthologies and literary journals. His debut novel, How to Leave the House, is also being adapted for television, and Newman is expected to write the episodes.
Natwest, the protagonist of How to Leave the House, is a young gay man getting ready to leave for university, but he is more concerned about a potentially embarrassing package that is supposed to arrive. As he leaves his house in search of the misdelivered package, he meets a variety of people from his neighborhood, and Newman uses those perspectives to create hilarious interactions as well as a portrait of a place where everyone is more than they seem.
A writer in Publishers Weekly called the book a “raucous adventure,” a “witty and endearing mosaic novel,” and “great fun.” They wrote that “Newman delves into his characters’ hidden passions” and reveals “their self-defeating choices.” Michael F. Russo, writing in Library Journal, noted that the story is “mildly humorous but ultimately serious,” with Natwest wrestling with his own sexual identity and his relationship with his mother. Russo also emphasized that “Newman’s technique approaches the experimental.” A writer in Kirkus Reviews echoed the other reviews, calling the novel “raucous” and “smart and funny.” They described it as a “refreshing take on juvenilia and the enduring potency of art discourse.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2024, review of How to Leave the House.
Library Journal, July 7, 2024, Michael F. Russo, review of How to Leave the House, p. 88.
Publishers Weekly, June 17, 2024, review of How to Leave the House, p. 90.
BookPage, August, 2024, Cat Acree, “A Neighbor Just Like You: In Their Debut Novel, British Filmmaker Nathan Newman Puts Small-Town Personalities in the Spotlight,” author interview, p. 20.
ONLINE
Deadline, https://deadline.com/ (December 16, 2022), Max Goldbart, “‘How To Leave The House’: Passenger & Sinestra To Adapt Nathan Newman’s Novel For TV.”
Nathan Newman website, https://www.nathannewmanrules.com/ (September 12, 2024).
NPR Weekend Edition, https://www.npr.org/ (August 18, 2024), David Folkenflik, “Comic Novel ‘How to Leave The House’ Follows a Young Man on a Day-Long Hero’s Quest,” author interview.
The Bookseller, https://www.thebookseller.com/ (September 15, 2022), Lauren Brown, “Abacus Snares ‘Wickedly Funny; Debut Novel by Newman.”
Nathan Newman is a writer & filmmaker based in London. Their short stories have won awards including the James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, and they have been published in literary journals in the US and several anthologies in the UK. Their debut novel, HOW TO LEAVE THE HOUSE is due to be released in May in the UK and August in the US.
As well as writing, Nathan works as an usher at a cinema.
Comic novel 'How to Leave The House' follows a young man on a day-long hero's quest
August 18, 20248:19 AM ET
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NPR's David Folkenflik talks with British author Nathan Newman about their novel, "How to Leave The House." It covers a day-in-the life of a young adult who's finally moving out of his mom's house.
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DAVID FOLKENFLIK, HOST:
In case there is any doubt, the title of the first chapter of the new comic novel "How To Leave The House" spells it out. Natwest is the hero of the novel. He's young. He's about to head off to university a few years after his peers. The wrinkle - he's missing a package. It was supposed to be delivered the day before he leaves the English town he's known his entire life. The contents - well, they're potentially embarrassing, even mortifying, and so Natwest is determined to find it. "How To Leave The House" is Nathan Newman's debut novel, and they join me now to talk about it. Nathan Newman, welcome.
NATHAN NEWMAN: Hey. How you doing?
FOLKENFLIK: I'm good. I'm good, particularly after reading this book. Let's talk a little bit more about your protagonist, Natwest, the hero. Who is he? Why has it been so difficult for him to launch into adulthood?
NEWMAN: So he's a very anxious, nerdy, extremely art-obsessed 23-year-old. Because of his arrogance, he kind of went into his final exams at high school thinking he could pass them, and he didn't. And so he's been stranded in his small English town for the last four years. Now finally, he's gotten a place at university, and then this calamity arises with the package.
FOLKENFLIK: So Natwest, for American listeners - it's a little bit like calling him City Bank.
NEWMAN: Yes. Yeah. (Laughter) Yeah.
FOLKENFLIK: Tell us about what the name means.
NEWMAN: I mean, it's just funny. You know, I think there's a long history in English novels of characters having very silly names. It's also just a thing - like, you know, who wants to have a character called Sam or John or Bill or whatever? It's just kind of crafting a unique character. I always just thought it was funny. You know, he's named after this bank, which is very ubiquitous if you live in the U.K. It's free advertising as well 'cause if you see that bank, you're going, oh, I remember that book. It's quite a good book.
FOLKENFLIK: Natwest is on a daylong hero's quest to recover that package. It is his journey, his pilgrim's progress. Each chapter focuses on the various people in this town who he comes across, like an elderly neighbor. She's trying to impress a date by microwaving coq au vin, probably - between us - not the best idea. Or the - there's his dentist who's about to go public with a secret. I think we can reveal that to listeners. What's up with the dentist?
NEWMAN: So the dentist - he's a town dentist, but he's an artist in his spare time, and the subject of all of his paintings is the human mouth. He tries to paint other things, but he can only paint mouths. But he's very good at it. The kind of end point for a lot of the characters in the novel is this exhibition in town of all of their mouths as painted by the dentist.
FOLKENFLIK: When I was a kid, for two years, I lived in London. And on the BBC, they used to show Harold Lloyd - these old black-and-white comedic films on the regular. Yes, there are discussions about art. And, yes, there are discussions about, you know, do you like John Lennon or Paul McCartney better?
NEWMAN: Yeah.
FOLKENFLIK: But the whole Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton dichotomy is fiercely, fiercely fought. What is the deal with that in the book? And where do you come down on it?
NEWMAN: So for listeners, there's a big kind of deal made up in this novel around people putting people into categories. Are you a Charlie Chaplin person or a Buster Keaton person? Are you Paul McCartney, or are you John Lennon? For me, if those dichotomies tell you anything, I am a Paul McCartney, a Hagel, a Charlie Chaplin - although, possibly, I would like to be the other one. And obviously, all these binaries are - they're false at their root, which is also what the novel's about.
FOLKENFLIK: And I think anybody who reads this book will have a sense of the instinct to, whichever category you fall in, kind of yearn secretly to be in the other.
NEWMAN: Yeah. For sure.
FOLKENFLIK: There are people who look at Natwest - it seems to me - inside this book, with some degree of pity or dismissiveness. But does Natwest understand more about himself than those around him think he does?
NEWMAN: That's very interesting. I was actually having a discussion with this with someone - one of my friends who've read the book. And I think Natwest's image of himself is just completely off. Part of the reason why he's a comic character is because, you know, the vision which he has of himself is just so far misaligned with kind of who he is or certainly who the other people in the town see him as. If there is a pleasure in the book, it is entering other people's perspectives in these alternating chapters and then kind of getting their take on Natwest. And it's quite different from his interior monologue, which is much more self-absorbed, I think.
FOLKENFLIK: He has a very well-meaning, if awkward, exchange with this teenage girl. Her situation is pretty scary. What's happened to her?
NEWMAN: She has had her nudes leaked online, or someone is threatening to leak her nude pictures online. And her chapter is told all through text messages, forum posts and kind of anonymous online confessionals. And we kind of build up this picture of the internet in a way. It's kind of like, you're trying to tell her story through the voice of the internet, and that includes all of the nastiest parts of it as well as the funniest parts and the strangest parts and the silliest parts as well.
FOLKENFLIK: So what does his reaction to that circumstance, which he stumbled across, show us about him?
NEWMAN: I think with Natwest, it's - part of what he loves about himself is the - his youth and the fact that he's this - he views himself as a bit of a savant. But when he discovers someone who's going through a very similar crisis of exposure, which is - in Natwest's case, the package would expose him as something which he doesn't want to be seen as, and in Lily, who's - the girl's case, it would just be the most nasty exposure possible. It blows open his view about himself as having a important quest. You know, his quest is this kind of comic thing that he's built up in his head to be this massive, colossal, dramatic event in his life when, in actual fact, there are much bigger stories going on around him.
FOLKENFLIK: One thing I can't let go by without asking about is, man, does Natwest just trash the heck out of his mobile phone.
NEWMAN: Yeah (laughter).
FOLKENFLIK: What is the deal with that?
NEWMAN: I think when I set out to write this novel, one of the rules that I set for myself was that in every chapter where Natwest is the point-of-view character, he has to give one analysis of a piece of art, and then he has to drop his phone. Those are the two constants that happen throughout the book. You know, throughout the novel, the book (ph) gets increasingly cracked, increasingly destroyed until, you know, something may or may not happen at the end of the book around the phone.
FOLKENFLIK: It's a great shtick. Is it telling us anything beyond the shtick itself?
NEWMAN: Yeah, I think there is a clear unconscious desire within him to destroy his phone and to destroy everything that means, that particular kind of hyperconnectivity. I mean, I have that every single time I - my phone - if you saw my phone, it is just a spiderweb of cracks. It's crazy. And frequently - glass splinters in my fingers when I'm swiping. And you know what? I still don't get a screen protector. And I'm sure there's something psychological going on through that. And there is a point in the novel where Natwest is offered a phone case. Everyone keeps telling him to get a phone case. He goes into a shop, and they're selling half-price phone cases. And he says, nah, I won't need it today.
FOLKENFLIK: Not today - today, I've only dropped it 17 times.
NEWMAN: Yeah, exactly.
FOLKENFLIK: I don't need it in any way. If Natwest generally believes throughout the story that he's the main character in the story of his life...
NEWMAN: Yes.
FOLKENFLIK: ...And yet that gets tested - right? - over...
NEWMAN: Yeah.
FOLKENFLIK: ...The course of this tale, how should we think about our role in the stories of the people around us?
NEWMAN: I mean, that's just the - that's the goal of life. That's what everyone has to learn in their own unique ways. I don't think this book is - has anything particularly novel to say about it except to just kind of reaffirm it, you know, reaffirm the importance of other people and of understanding other people. If you've had a thought, then someone else has had a thought. There's nothing really unique there. What is unique is the specific interrelation of you with other people, not yourself in particular. That's just the standard life lesson that we need to relearn every single year.
FOLKENFLIK: Nathan Newman - their new novel is "How To Leave The House." Nathan, thanks so much for talking with me about it.
NEWMAN: Thank you so much, Dave. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF AIRIEL SONG, "IN YOUR ROOM")
Abacus snares ‘wickedly funny’ debut novel by Newman
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Sep 15, 2022
by Lauren Brown
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Nathan Newman
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Abacus has signed How to Leave the House, the “wickedly funny” debut novel by Nathan Newman, written under the mentorship of Zadie Smith at New York University.
Publishing director Anna Kelly acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Charlie Brotherstone at Brotherstone Creative Management, for publication in spring 2024. US rights were acquired by Patrick Nolan at Viking.
How to Leave the House follows Natwest, an intelligent, anxious 23-year-old who orders an embarrassing package to his house on the eve of his departure for university, the publisher’s synopsis reads.
The synopsis continues: “When it doesn’t arrive, he’s forced on a 24-hour odyssey around his small town to retrieve it, meeting a whole spectrum of characters along the way, each explored in alternating chapters, each with their own lives and problems. But it all comes back to Natwest – a literary hero for his generation. By the time he finally gets his hands on the package, everything has changed.”
Kelly said: “How to Leave the House is wickedly funny, irreverent and thought-provoking, full of ideas about identity and choice, about sex, gender, binaries and difference, and the paths our lives take and what we can and cannot change.
“But for all its beguiling and virtuoso cleverness, it’s also at heart a tender and moving story about connection, empathy and our ongoing – often faltering – attempts to understand each other.
“Nathan’s talent and ambition are inspiring, and I feel privileged to be working with them right at the beginning of what I am confident is going to be a dazzling career. I am particularly pleased as Nathan is the first new author I am welcoming to the Abacus imprint in its new life as a hardback imprint.”
Newman said: “I’m very excited to be joining Abacus in publishing How To Leave The House. It’s a privilege to appear on a list which has published so many of my favourite novelists and thinkers — I hope my inclusion doesn’t lower the tone.
“I’m especially thrilled to be working with Anna, who vibes with the novel so acutely. I can’t wait to work with her and the rest of the team at Abacus, as well as Patrick Nolan and everyone at Viking Penguin in the US. And as always, super grateful to my agent Charlie.”
‘How To Leave The House’: Passenger & Sinestra To Adapt Nathan Newman’s Novel For TV
By Max Goldbart
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December 16, 2022 6:00am
Nathan Newman
Nathan Newman
Fremantle
This England EP Richard Brown’s Passenger and Chernobyl director Johan Rencks/Spaceman producer Michael Parets’ new shingle Sinestra have optioned Nathan Newman’s How to Leave the House.
The pair have acquired TV rights following competitive auction to the novel due out in Spring 2024. It marks the first major revealed project for Passenger since being acquired by Fremantle and one of Sinestra’s first projects since launching several weeks ago with a first-look Fremantle deal.
Taking place over 24 hours, Newman’s book follows Natwest, a precociously intelligent but anxious 23 year old who orders an embarrassing package to his house on the eve of his departure for university. When it doesn’t arrive, he is forced on an odyssey around his small town to retrieve it.
How to Leave the House
Nathan Newman. Viking, $29 (288p)
ISBN 978-0-593-65490-3
Newman debuts with a witty and endearing mosaic novel centered on a young gay man's desperate quest to avoid embarrassment. Natwest, 23, who's nicknamed after the U.K. bank, is set to leave his mother's house for his delayed start to university, but not before he tracks down the large dildo that was scheduled for delivery the day prior ("Humiliation, which was lurking around the corner of his life at all times, was now very much on his doorstep"). It turns out the package was mistakenly picked up by his dentist, Dr. Hung. As Natwest tries to claim the package from Hung's office, where his mother works as a nurse, he encounters people whose stories Newman continues in chapters devoted to their perspectives. Among them are Mishaal, a film student turned imam who secretly watches classic movies with a Christian reverend; Lily, a crying teen Natwest comforts at a bus stop, who's being extorted by someone she met online and sent nude photos to; and Hung, an amateur painter fixated on gaping mouths. The situations are enjoyably farcical, but there's also depth to them, as Newman delves into his characters' hidden passions and shows how they grapple with their self-defeating choices. This raucous adventure is great fun. Agent: Charlie Brotherstone, Aevitas U.K. (Aug.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"How to Leave the House." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 24, 17 June 2024, p. 90. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A800405075/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=df1279ea. Accessed 23 Aug. 2024.
Newman, Nathan. How To Leave the House Viking. Aug. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9780593654903. $29. F
DEBUT Natwest is a 23-year-old living with his mother in a small town in England. Tomorrow he will leave for university, but today he goes to the post office for a package he is anxious to retrieve. There he encounters Dr. Hung, his dentist, who is also attempting to retrieve a package that he too has been anxiously awaiting. The two men's parcels are mixed up, and from there, the story becomes an Odyssean quest as Natwest attempts to track down his package before anyone discovers what's in it. The story is mildly humorous but ultimately serious, as Natwest grapples with his bisexuality, his origins (he never knew his father), and his complicated relationship with his mother. In places, Newman's technique approaches the experimental--as the point of view shifts from one character to another, the story begins again from this new point of view; at one point, Newman steps in with an "author's note" to apprise readers of an image that was expurgated by the publisher. VERDICT Toward the novel's end, Natwest asks, "How many ways could this go?" Newman answers Natwest's question by providing two different endings, one cheerful, the other not. Readers will have to decide which ending is the real one, or if they both hold truth.--Michael F. Russo
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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Russo, Michael F. "Newman, Nathan. How To Leave the House." Library Journal, vol. 149, no. 7, July 2024, p. 88. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A800536127/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7258f207. Accessed 23 Aug. 2024.
Newman, Nathan HOW TO LEAVE THE HOUSE Viking (Fiction None) $29.00 8, 13 ISBN: 9780593654903
A wayward 20-something art critic discovers a great deal about himself and his hometown in pursuit of a missing package.
The inciting incident for debut author Newman's raucous first novel is a simple mix-up of the Royal Mail. Natwest, a once-precocious English teen and aspiring art critic, has aged into a pretentious young adult finally headed off to university. The morning before departing his small town for the big city, Natwest anxiously awaits the arrival of a discreet package of particular length and girth, only to inadvertently swap parcels at the post office with his mother's employer, dentist Dr. Richard Hung (pun very much intended). As Natwest attempts to recoup his item, his path intersects with a number of seemingly minor characters whose roles gradually assume greater importance: Mrs. Pandey, a former teacher who fostered young Natwest's potential; Joan, a widower across the street who's getting back into the dating scene; and Mishaal, a local imam enduring an unhappy marriage. Newman expertly threads together the minor events and small mishaps of the characters' lives in a convincing recreation of the inescapable social overlap that often defines life in a small town. Underlying it all is a preoccupation with beauty and the value of art. Natwest obsessively sees references everywhere: His mother in an orange nighty recalls "Leighton's Flaming June"; the stares of disapproving neighbor boys "pierced him like the arrows in a St. Sebastian picture." More than motifs, artistic legacies are also the source of much of the book's humor--at one point, Natwest imagines Geoff Dyer attending his funeral. Newman works in more profound interactions as well. Reconnecting on a park bench, Natwest and former mentor Mrs. Pandey debate the artistic merits of a nail salon mural painted in the style of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, the outstretched fingers on each figure sporting pink nail polish: It's ?i?ekian, it's Jungian, it's Pop Art in situ, "Warhol's soup cans, restored to the Asda aisle." In seeking to balance intelligent prose, insightful commentary, and compelling characters, Newman delivers.
Smart and funny, Newman's debut is a refreshing take on juvenilia and the enduring potency of art discourse.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Newman, Nathan: HOW TO LEAVE THE HOUSE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799332845/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=16af34e3. Accessed 23 Aug. 2024.
Nathan Newman challenges readers to reckon with all the cruelties and joys of human interaction in their debut novel, How to Leave the House, which tells the story of a young man named Natwest, interspersed with the stories of the many people in his town whose daily lives butt up against his own. Newman's novel is an unserious look at serious things--in particular, how isolated we can feel when deeply immersed in our own problems. Here, Newman gets the main character treatment and shares their thoughts on art, storytelling, their neighbors and criticism in the internet age.
What is most likely to get you to leave the house?
Friends, a party, a trip to the cinema, an aquatic-themed fetish night--really anything social that might rescue me from the little cocoon of my writing room.
Do you know your neighbors? Do they know you?
I live on an estate with a somewhat uneasy and pretty diverse alliance of council flat owners, tenants, students, gentrifiers, care-service users. It's always cordial. There is an estate WhatsApp group and everyone is currently unified against the midnight to 5 a.m. roadworks happening on the main street beside us. Nothing brings British residents together more than a good moan about the council--so that's solidarity of some kind.
Even though How to Leave the House takes place in a small town, the day's happenings feel much like those of a big city, with chaos and hilarity around every corner, and interactions that are intimate, intense and brief. Do you see similarities between big-city stories and small-town tales? Is How to Leave the House occupying both spaces?
I wrote the novel while living in London, right after my last year of university in Warwick (which is a very small town indeed). The spirit of both spaces is probably embedded in the book. Of course there are more stories on one South London street than could occupy a century's worth of fiction, but I don't think living in a small town is any different--except that you're more likely to know the person you've just bumped into.
Natwest is the apparent main character of the story, yet all these chapters have their own main characters. Amid our current obsession with main character energy, and the constant pressure to romanticize and glamorize our lives, how do you approach storytelling? How do you tell stories when everyone is the main character?
There are so many different people on the street, and they are all main characters in their own worlds--that's a universal human delusion, and not unique to this generation. Writing with this in mind seemed pretty sensible. My novel is told from the perspective of 15-year-olds, 80-year-olds, 30-year-olds and 50-year-olds, jumping between different classes, genders, races and sexualities with a freedom that hopefully explodes, or at least formally adapts this obsession with main character energy.
When Natwest encounters his former teacher Miss Pandey, she challenges him to rethink art in a particularly wonderful discussion. "What would happen if you treated every work of art as perfect, and then worked backwards?" she says. "If you presumed that every 'blemish' or 'failing' or 'irregularity' in tone or pacing or structure or payoff was intended by the artist?" She says that such a mentality allows the world to "open up." Do you approach art from this mindset, and if so, how do you hold on to that openness?
It's an aspiration, and I don't always achieve it! Any criticism is a difficult line to walk. There is a difference, I think, between coming to an artwork with an open heart and mind, and consuming something without any discernment. The internet has encouraged us to consume without prejudice, flattening out once and for all any distinction between high and low culture. A tremendous libidinal liberation--and partly what this novel is about. But we need some way of reining it in and finding a middle ground. I think that's what Miss Pandey is arguing for.
On your website, you have reviewed other authors' websites. Is it not a conflict of interest to review Zadie Smith's website, as she was your mentor at New York University?
It's true that I attended NYU for a single semester over Zoom before dropping out. During that period I learned that Zadie is incredibly defensive when it comes to her website. After I gave it an 8/10 she launched a defamation suit, and we are now in a pretty fierce legal skirmish--fortunately it looks like I'm going to win.
I think her sales are plummeting as we speak.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 BookPage
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Source Citation
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Acree, Cat. "A neighbor just like you: In their debut novel, British filmmaker Nathan Newman puts small-town personalities in the spotlight." BookPage, Aug. 2024, p. 20. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799708738/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3643d809. Accessed 23 Aug. 2024.