The Adventurist

At a software company in a Southern city, one lovesick, whip-smart software engineer has a crisis of confidence, in the tradition of Richard Ford and Walker Percy. In the anonymous office park of a modern software company, Henry Hurt is a man in the middle: of life, of career, of self-assessment. Mired in his corporate responsibilities, Henry's deathless office existence is torpedoed by the loss of his mother. Haunted by her death, and by a strange angst he describes as "the pall," Henry seeks escape in a quest for love and heroic 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 urgent question of his life. The Adventurist is a story about relationships: Henry has complicated ones with his sister, his lover and a tantalizing potential girlfriend. But his relationship to his corporate and familial responsibilities ballast him, too.

About the Author :
A former programmer, J. Bradford Hipps turned to fiction after a ten-year software career. He received his graduate degree from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, where he was awarded the Inprint Michener Prize, the program's top writing honor, as well as nomination for Best New American Voices. He lives with his wife and children in Texas.

Review :
"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