The Adventurist, J. Bradford Hipps
The Adventurist, J. Bradford Hipps
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

The Adventurist
A Novel

Author: J. Bradford Hipps

Narrator: George Newbern

Unabridged: 10 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/05/2016


Synopsis

In the anonymous office park of a modern software company, whip-smart software engineer Henry Hurt is a man in the middle: of life, of career, and of self-assessment. Mired in his corporate responsibilities, Henry's deathless office existence is torpedoed by losing his mother.

Overcome by "the pall," Henry seeks escape in a quest for love and purpose occasioned by a crisis in his company's fortunes. Dodging an Iago-like rival, he finds love with a colleague in his department, endangers his bond with his family, and finally confronts the single urgent question of his life.

J. Bradford Hipps's The Adventurist is about relationships: Henry has complicated ones with his sister, Gretchen, who has stayed at home with their father; his lover Jane, a sleek and efficient mirror image of Henry; and a tantalizing potential girlfriend, Madison, the ultimate free spirit. But his relationship to his corporate and familial responsibilities may change his fortunes even more than the women in his life.

About J. Bradford Hipps

A former programmer, J. Bradford Hipps turned to fiction after a ten-year software career, authoring The Adventurist. He received his graduate degree from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, where he was awarded the Inprint Michener Prize. He lives with his wife and children in Texas.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Dotty on May 03, 2016

Wow, I know this guy, or several guys like this - at work. This is an existential book - a paean to the limited expectations of middle managers in the tech industry - and what happens when their imaginations (also limited) get away from them. The only good things to say about the protagonist - he was......more

Goodreads review by Joan on June 23, 2016

My favorite first novel in recent memory. (Usually I avoid first novels because, well, first novels.) The writing is so assured, so generous and full of human decency, and (mostly) so perfectly wry that I had trouble putting it down. The story is a "slow boil" so it's not for everyone. But the chara......more

Goodreads review by Nolan on May 14, 2016

The best book of fiction I have read in years. It shows the ways in which we distract ourselves from the true nature of our existence. It does so with sharp wit and even sharper insights, and it ultimately reminds us that if we don’t confront reality it will eventually confront us.......more

Goodreads review by SueKich on August 03, 2017

This. Is. The Business. The story may be slight but through the inner life of its narrator Henry Hurt (read into the name what you will) this exceptionally good novel delivers an underlying truth about the human condition. A bright but in all other respects just an ordinary guy, Henry is the manager......more

Goodreads review by Michael on December 13, 2016

J. Bradford Hipps' novel The Adventurist (his first, I believe), was a challenge. Not because of its length (it's relatively short) or poor writing (the prose is excellent), but due to the lack of a real plot. The Adventurist is a theme book that's about relationships, memories, and reflection woven......more


Quotes

“A bright and large-souled first novel…His novel’s hero, Henry Hurt…may remind some readers of Binx Bolling, the New Orleans stockbroker who is the protagonist of Walker Percy’s classic novel “The Moviegoer” (1961)…Mr. Hipps is as adept as a gifted playwright at setting a scene. Important moments in “The Adventurist” occur in airports and snowed-in hotel bars, where the electricity flickers. The author writes about these places with a casual vividness that put me in mind of Walter Kirn’s novel Up in the Air... The Adventurist activated most of my cranial pleasure centers.” - Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Delightfully funny. The self-doubt, the inspired riffs on philosophy and inquiry, please on every single page. This is a carefully wrought report on How We Live Now. I am in awe of its deep intelligence.” – Antonya Nelson, author of Funny Once

"In The Adventurist, Prufrock meets a more abstracted Jake Barnes, if only Jake saw to his own unmanning in the ersatz theater of war that is corporate America. Henry Hurt has let the drama of work stand in for the drama of existence, but when a midlife discontent stirs, Henry seeks love, and therein lies the pathos of this absorbing book. When we realize how death-haunted Henry is, we want to hurry him along to happiness. Hipps makes the path frustrating for his hero and page-turningly captivating for us. The engine powering this highly original philosophical investigation is a prose as rich and lush as it is careful and precise." –Matthew Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves

“Hipps’…writing is just about perfect: incisive, eloquent, philosophical, and witty by turns…Like Richard Ford, Hipps finds illumination about the meaning of life everywhere he looks. The arrival of a top-notch talent.” - Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"The epigraph from Walker Percy's The Moviegoer is well-chosen. Like Binx Bolling, Henry Hurt is an interested and analytic observer fleeing the ever-present specter of despair. 'Our place in the world may derive from mysterious cosmic programs,' he essays, 'but the code is not indecipherable.' The Adventurist isn't so much a novel of corporate America as that of a man trying to live in hope and wonder, despite all of our natural losses." - Stewart O’Nan, author of Emily, Alone and West of Sunset


Awards

  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year