Summary

The whole of Chapter 10 covers Nate’s history with Elisa at the behest of Hannah’s inquiry. The night of the wedding picnic, Nate stays with Hannah and she asks what the deal had been with him and Elisa. The narrator says that “Nate paused before answering” (123), then relates their past.

Nate met Elisa three years prior at a publishing party. She had attended Brown and the Sorbonne and earned her master’s in comp lit. She was at her first job in publishing and wanted to be a writer. Nate was impressed by her knowledge of avant-garde films and how she differed from editorial types he had dated in that she was “unusually serious and well informed,” young and attractive (124). She struck him as “clearly first-rate, top-shelf, the publishing equivalent of Amy Perelman in high school and Will McDormand’s best-looking gals at...