"Let Me Try Again" by Matthew Davis
A Romantic Tragicomedy of Faith, Family, and Folly
Ross, twenty-three, isn’t nearly as clever as he thinks he is. His brilliant idea to break up with his girlfriend, Lora Liamant, in an attempt to show her how terrible other men are and how empty life would be without him, has backfired spectacularly. Within weeks, he discovers she’s moved on with the brother of a famous network TV actor. In the midst of his heartbreak, Ross’s parents die tragically—in a helicopter crash at an all-inclusive resort in Turks and Caicos—leaving him with millions of dollars and custody over his teenage sister.
Traumatized, ruminating, and rich, Ross plots scheme after scheme to show Lora he’s changed into a responsible adult, even as she shows no indication of wanting that. Everything he does seems to make matters worse, as his misguided mission of self-transformation only leads to Lora’s confusion and dismay.
Let Me Try Again is an electric picaresque charting a young Jewish man’s spiral of neurotic pride and self-improvement within a culture that only caters to his worst impulses. Brimming with vitality and crackling with wit, Matthew Davis’s dynamic debut illuminates the absurdities of twenty-first-century life with ecstatic flair.
Author
Matthew Davis is a software engineer whose work has been published in The Verge, Hobart, Forever Magazine, and Heavy Traffic, among other publications. He lives in New York City.
Praise
"I highly enjoyed this darkly comical, compulsively readable novel about love and obsession. Woody Allen-esque."—TAO LIN, author of Leave Society and Taipei
"Matthew Davis has a distinct, charming and compelling voice—funny, original, contemporary and clear, with sprinkles of Bret Easton Ellis, Philip Roth, and even Helen DeWitt."—SHEILA HETI, New York Times bestselling author of Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?
“Matthew Davis is that startling anomaly: a real writer in unreal times.”—BRUCE WAGNER, author of Dead Stars and Roar: American Master
