The Rules of Attraction

Set at Camden College, a small, affluent liberal arts school in New Hampshire, during the fall semester of 1985, the novel follows three students whose romantic lives intersect and collapse against a backdrop of constant partying, drug use, and emotional vacancy. The narrative is told through rotating first-person perspectives, primarily those of Sean Bateman, Paul Denton, and Lauren Hynde, whose accounts of the same events frequently contradict one another.

The novel opens mid-sentence with an unnamed woman recounting how she lost her virginity years earlier at a Camden party, ending up in bed with two strangers while pining for someone else. She concludes with a resigned declaration that she always knew it would happen this way. This prologue establishes the story's tone of disillusionment before the narrative shifts to the present term.

Sean is a drug-dealing Senior who gives fake names to the women he sleeps with, owes money to Rupert, a menacing townie dealer who is dating Roxanne, a fellow student, and drifts through campus with detached bravado. Paul is a bisexual Drama major who spent the summer in New York conducting a secret affair with Mitchell Allen, a fellow student who recoiled from Paul's affection in public and has now taken up with a Sophomore named Candice. Lauren is a Senior art student consumed by longing for her boyfriend Victor, who left for Europe months ago and has sent no letters or phone calls. All three attend the same Thirsty Thursday party at Windham House, each narrating it differently. Sean goes home with a Senior named Deidre, giving her a fake name. Paul leaves with a Swedish Freshman but declines to sleep with her. Lauren, despite promising herself fidelity to Victor, sleeps with a Freshman named Steve.

Victor's own narration provides a rambling account of his months backpacking through Europe: a haze of hash, hostels, casual sex, and fruitless searching for a girl named Jaime whose whereabouts he can never confirm. He is mugged in Amsterdam and does not reappear until late in the novel.

Paul's infatuation with Mitchell ends definitively at a Friday night party when Mitchell tells Paul, "I warned you," and walks away with Candice. Standing alone at the keg, Paul strikes up a conversation with Sean. Their exchange is filtered through radically different perceptions: Paul believes Sean is asking him on a date to a Mexican restaurant, while Sean merely wants someone to split a case of beer. Paul arranges dinner for the following Saturday but misses it when a Freshman's suicide attempt lands him at a local hospital. Paul and Sean reconnect at a party the next night. Back in Paul's room, after drinking and smoking pot, Paul kisses Sean. Sean reciprocates after nervous stalling, and they have sex, though Sean's narration of the same evening is starkly different: He found Paul unbearable, got drunk, and left to wander campus.

Despite these mismatched perceptions, the two begin a weeks-long affair. Paul stops attending classes and devotes himself to Sean. They shoplift together, drink at local bars, and ride Sean's motorcycle through the New England night. Paul discovers anonymous love notes in Sean's campus mailbox, passionate declarations from someone who watches Sean obsessively. Paul grows jealous and puts cigarettes out in the mailbox of the girl he suspects is leaving them.

Meanwhile, Lauren drifts through the term in a fog. She receives no mail from Victor. She changes her major to Poetry. She sleeps with Franklin, a boy her friend Judy is also seeing, rationalizing it because he reminds her of Victor.

Paul's mother summons him to Boston for a weekend at the Ritz-Carlton, where she reveals that she and Paul's father are divorcing. Paul receives the news with practiced indifference. He dreads leaving Sean unguarded during the upcoming Dressed To Get Screwed party.

On the night of the party, Sean becomes convinced the anonymous love notes are from Lauren after claiming to see her slip one into his box. At the party, they meet in the bathroom, dance, and leave together. The anonymous narrator, a woman who calls herself Mary, watches them go, realizes her obsessive hope is finished, and walks away alone. In a subsequent passage, the anonymous narrator slits her wrists in a bathtub; the text cuts off mid-sentence as consciousness fades. Roxanne discovers the body the next morning and runs screaming across campus, pulling fire alarms. Paul, returning from Boston, sees the aftermath: Roxanne's screams, fire alarms, and then Lauren's face appearing in Sean's window, followed by Sean waving down at him.

Sean and Lauren begin dating. Sean is infatuated and convinced the notes prove her love. Lauren finds the relationship hollow: the sex mediocre, Sean's interests limited to beer and video games. Sean takes Lauren to a farewell party for Vittorio, her elderly Italian poetry teacher, who openly flirts with Lauren. Sean passes out drunk; when he wakes, Lauren refuses to leave the old man's side. That same night, Sean sleeps with Judy, Lauren's best friend. Judy tells Lauren directly. Lauren confronts Sean about the hickey on his neck, and he denies it. She tells him she does not care. He asks, "Why don't you love me, Lauren?" She tells him to leave.

Sean's despair escalates. On Halloween, he attempts suicide three times: by hanging with a necktie that rips, by swallowing cold medicine, and by cutting his wrists with a dull razor. That night, he brings a carved pumpkin to Lauren's door, finds her gone, sees her dancing with another boy at the party, and smashes the pumpkin against her door. Lauren finds him in his room covered in Fun Blood, a novelty product. She screams, then kneels, wipes his face, and kisses him.

They reconcile briefly. At the Winter Carnival, Lauren tells Sean she is pregnant. Sean proposes marriage. Lauren accepts, though she is unsure who the father is. They drive to New York to stay with married friends from Camden whose comfortable, vacuous lifestyle horrifies them both. Lauren realizes she does not love Sean. Back in New Hampshire, she has an abortion at a clinic. In the car afterward, Sean asks, "Truce?" Lauren says, "No way."

In parallel, Sean visits his dying father in a New York hospital. His brother Patrick pressures Sean about failing grades and mounting debts. Sean deflects with hostility and leaves alone.

Victor returns to Camden near the end of term. He calls a campus house looking for Jaime; Lauren answers and recognizes his voice, saying she has missed him, though Victor does not realize who she is. When they later meet at The Brasserie, a restaurant in town, Lauren cries and takes his arm. She resolves not to tell him about the abortion. At the same restaurant, Lauren recognizes the waiter as the townie from the novel's opening scene, the one she may have lost her virginity to. He does not recognize her.

Paul confronts Sean in a parking lot, where Sean ends their relationship, accusing Paul of ruining their friendship with sex. On the last day of term, Lauren and Paul share a brief, tender exchange outside her dormitory. Paul asks if Lauren was the one leaving notes in Sean's box. She tells him it was not her.

Paul spots Sean's motorcycle at the campus guard house and runs after it but cannot catch up. A student pulls over and offers a ride. Paul, laughing and feeling "unchanged," gets in the car. Sean drives away from Camden with no destination, picks up a hitchhiker on the edge of town, turns up the radio, and the novel's final sentence cuts off mid-clause, mirroring the mid-sentence opening and leaving the narrative permanently unfinished.