The Optimists

A beloved schoolteacher chronicles the meteoric rise of his most dazzling student in this ambitious, big-hearted work of literary fiction, perfect for fans of Nathan Hill, Susan Choi, and Tess Gunty.  

Mr. Keating is an extraordinary teacher: brilliant, dedicated, and possibly a few pages ahead in a book no one else is reading.  He’s a magician able to enchant fourteen-year-olds into a love of writing and literature.  Yet no student has lived up to the promise of their potential more than Clara Hightower.  Over the course of three decades, Clara is a kindergarten thief, a high school genius, a Silicon Valley celebrity, and an animal rights activist turned terrorist.

To tell Clara’s story, Mr. Keating must tell his own, including his courtship and marriage, his dreams of writing and comedy, his days in the classroom in lower Manhattan along with the rivalry and friendship with his Head of School, and his eventual stroke and the isolation that follows.

The Optimists is a love story, a joke book, and a meditation on the meaning of life and death. But mostly it’s a fiercely original novel for anyone who has ever had a teacher or student profoundly affect their life. 

• “Great books are like great teachers: they are wise, humane, compassionate, and they illuminate the world in ways we never knew were possible. The Optimists is all of this and more. It’s a beautiful novel about how we love, how we remember, and how—if we’re lucky—we get to mean something to someone else.”
  Nathan Hill, author of, Wellness
• "In The Optimists, Brian Platzer captures the life-or-death stakes of teaching in a way that few other novels have. I was so impressed by the way it manages its complex mix of humor and tragedy, and I found myself consistently surprised by the elegance of its revelations. Even as a committed pessimist, I was wholly won over by The Optimists." 
  Andrew Martin, author of, Early Work
• "The long tail, in both lives, of the relationship between that one great teacher and that one special student. Come for the gloriously corny jokes and arcane grammar tips, stay for the salutary tale of two very different people trying to figure out what it means to lead a well spent life."
  Jonathan Dee, Pulitzer finalist for, The Privileges
• "The Optimists is engaging and propulsive from the outset, and the novel deepens and surprises along the way, gathering itself up into a work of startling poignancy. Brian Platzer writes with grace and witty precision about the varieties of human feeling, and he’s a font of above-average knock-knock jokes to boot." 
  Sam Lipsyte, author of, The Ask
• 
  "The Optimists by Brian Platzer manages the neat trick of being both an incredibly engaging story—told by a hugely appealing, joke-addicted, Yankees-loving, true-believer of a narrator—and a smart, subtle, unsparing look at a quarter century of recent US history, which encompasses tech-start-up culture, eco-activism, big-city income inequality and Ponzi wreckage. This is a wonderful, big-hearted novel and deserves every reader lucky enough to get their hands on it."
  Laird Hunt, National Book Award for Fiction finalist for, Zorrie
• “This is a highly original novel, full of affection and intelligence, and of insights into the world of teachers, eighth graders, parents and children, teenagers and the story of love. Read it!”
  Roxana Robinson, author of, Leaving
• “The hothouse world of precious academics and precocious children is as strange a place as any to find hope, but the school at the center of The Optimists is such a place. It is the ideal setting for fragile but enduring love, love between young and brilliant students under the fascinated and watchful eye of a loving educator. A book for anyone who has had an unlikely future shaped by a brilliant teacher, which is all of us, isn’t it?”  
  Stephen Marche, author of, On Writing and Failure