MENU
The Object of My Affection

  • 1987, 1991
  • MacMillan, Simon & Schuster
Formats
  • Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, eBook

The Object of My Affection

George and Nina seem like the perfect couple.

They share a cozy, cluttered Brooklyn apartment, a taste for impromptu tuna casserole dinners, and a devotion to ballroom dancing lessons at Arthur Murray. They love each other.

There's only one hitch: George is gay.

When Nina announces she's pregnant, things get especially complicated. Howard—Nina's overbearing boyfriend and the baby's father—wants marriage. Nina wants independence. George will do anything for a little unqualified affection, but is he ready to become an unwed surrogate dad?

Other Editions

The Object of My Affection has been re-printed and re-released a number of times since 1987, in various formats, including movie tie-in versions. It is also available in the UK and in translation in French.

Film Adaptation

The Object of My Affection was adapted to film in 1998. The late Wendy Wasserstein wrote the screenplay and Nicholas Hytner directed, with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd in the starring roles. Full details at IMDB.com.

Praise for The Object of My Affection

"A very funny, exceptionally vivid first novel... Surely on of the best books about what it is like to be young in these crazy times." The New York Times Book Review

"Joyously comic...shimmers with hope, humor, and compassion." People

From the Author

"This novel started out as a short story. It was the first thing I ever wrote in a conversational style, and it was the first time I tried using a tone intended to be comic. I wrote the story as a tribute to a woman with whom I'd had a short, very romantic friendship. But by the end of it, the characters had taken on lives of their own, and I found I wanted to spend more time with them. So I tossed a pregnancy into their relationship and kept writing to see what would happen.

"My friend and I lost touch around the time I started writing the novel in earnest. About four years after it was published, she sent me an invitation to her wedding. It was held on the Jersey Shore on a warm day in October, the weekend of the Anita Hill hearings. She looked very beautiful and very happy, but we didn't seem to have much to say to each other, and we haven't talked or written since. I'd always planned to end the novel at the wedding of Nina, the character based on my friend, but it just didn't work out that way. It seems right to me that the actual friendship ended where it did."

The Object of My Affection

  • 1987, 1991
  • MacMillan, Simon & Schuster
Formats
  • Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, eBook

From the Author

"This novel started out as a short story. It was the first thing I ever wrote in a conversational style, and it was the first time I tried using a tone intended to be comic. I wrote the story as a tribute to a woman with whom I'd had a short, very romantic friendship. But by the end of it, the characters had taken on lives of their own, and I found I wanted to spend more time with them. So I tossed a pregnancy into their relationship and kept writing to see what would happen.

"My friend and I lost touch around the time I started writing the novel in earnest. About four years after it was published, she sent me an invitation to her wedding. It was held on the Jersey Shore on a warm day in October, the weekend of the Anita Hill hearings. She looked very beautiful and very happy, but we didn't seem to have much to say to each other, and we haven't talked or written since. I'd always planned to end the novel at the wedding of Nina, the character based on my friend, but it just didn't work out that way. It seems right to me that the actual friendship ended where it did."