Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew up… in Wisconsin. Will has wanted to be a politician since he was a boy, which is why he had to leave Madison (and his college sweetheart) for New York City, where he would work on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Living… in New York. Will, now 38, is gliding into middle age as an unhappy divorcé. He says that the only good thing in his life is his 10-year-old daughter, Maya.
Profession… wannabe politician. Former “coffee-and-bagel guy” on the Clinton ’92 campaign, Will worked his way up in the political world and eventually started his own campaign management consultancy with his best friend. But after a shocking betrayal shatters that dream, he’s resigned himself to working for an advertising agency.
Interests… aside from politics and current events, romance. Always a romantic, Will has unfortunately had bad luck in love. Now, in 2008, he finds himself reminiscing about the three great loves of his life: his college sweetheart Emily, the vivacious and fun-loving April and the sophisticated journalist Summer.
Relationship Status… divorced. Now single, Will still hopes to end up with the love of his life. He just needs a bit of help figuring out who that is, exactly.
Challenge… explaining the mysterious nature of relationships and love to his young daughter. Will is recounting the long story of his love life to Maya, but he’s changing the names of the three women to see if she can guess which one ended up being her mother. While telling the story, Will might just learn something about himself. Maybe things aren’t always as complicated as they seem.
Personality… smart, hardworking, and boyish. Above all else, Will is a caring father who looks out for his daughter’s best interests. Though he may have gotten lost along the way, he is genuinely hoping to reconcile with the “one who got away,” and his witty, charming daughter might just be able to help figure out how to get her back.
Get to Know him in...
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When Will decides to tell his daughter the story of how he met her mother, he discovers that a second look at the past might also give him a second chance at the future.
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In its first-ever unexpurgated edition, a sci-fi landmark that's a comic and suspenseful tour-de-force, and puts distraction in a whole new light: It's not you, it's the universe!
Boris and Arkady Strugatsky were the greatest science fiction writers of the Soviet era: their books were intellectually provocative and riotously funny, full of boldly imagined scenarios and veiled—but clear—social criticism. Which may be why Definitely Maybe has never before been available in an uncensored edition, let alone in English.
It tells the story of astrophysicist Dmitri Malianov, who has sent his wife and son off to her mother’s house in Odessa so that he can work, free from distractions, on the project he’s sure will win him the Nobel Prize.
But he’d have an easier time making progress if he wasn’t being interrupted all the time: First, it’s the unexpected delivery of a crate of vodka and caviar. Then a beautiful young woman in an unnervingly short skirt shows up at his door. Then several of his friends—also scientists—drop by, saying they all felt they were on the verge of a major discovery when they got . . . distracted . . .
Is there an ominous force that doesn’t want knowledge to progress? Or could it be something more . . . natural?
In this nail-bitingly suspenseful book, the Strugatsky brothers bravely and brilliantly question authority: an authority that starts with crates of vodka, but has lightning bolts in store for humans who refuse to be cowed.
