All Adults Here
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A Novel
by Emma Straub
On Sale: May 4, 2020
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Paperback: 368 Pages
Publisher Description
A warm, funny, and keenly perceptive novel about the life cycle of one family–as the kids become parents, grandchildren become teenagers, and a matriarch confronts the legacy of her mistakes. From the New York Times bestselling author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers.
When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she’d been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?
Astrid’s youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid’s thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most.
In All Adults Here, Emma Straub’s unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not.
About the author
Emma Straub is the New York Times‒bestselling author of the novels All Adults Here, Modern Lovers, The Vacationers, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married. Straub’s work has been published in twenty countries, and she and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.
Praise
“All Adults Here is a master class on the small-scale American drama. . . this warm, optimistic novel argues that one should keep trying, regardless. All Adults Here affirms the value of community and family, no matter the strife that may rise up within them.” —Vogue
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“There’s refuge to be found in stories of everyday people going about their lives. . . . Emma Straub has become adept at finding amusement in the mundane, and her newest, All Adults Here, might just be her best yet.” —Oprah Magazine
“The queen of the summer novel. . . we have turned to [Emma Straub] to bring us highly enjoyable, yet still thought-provoking, tales about witty protagonists in the throes of life changes.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Straub’s best book yet . . .excellent book-group fodder.”—The Washington Post
“In her witty new novel, All Adults Here, Emma Straub examine adolescence, aging, gender, and sexuality through the nuanced experiences of three generations of a New York family.” —Harper’s Bazaar
“This book has it all: conflicted characters, teenagers learning who they are, a single mom having a steamy affair, and goats. Yep, goats”— Good Housekeeping
“The perfect book to read during quarantine if your family is driving you crazy . . . a layered love story that examines, and ultimately celebrates, the modern, multigenerational family dynamic.”—Parade
“You may have fallen in love with Emma Straub from reading her New York Times-bestselling novel Modern Lovers or by visiting her beloved Brooklyn bookstore, Books Are Magic. Some good news (FOR ONCE) from 2020 is that Straub is back with a new novel, All Adults Here… It’s the warm and funny novel only one Emma Straub can deliver to us in this time of need.” —PAPER MAGAZINE
“There’s no drama like family drama as Emma Straub (the beloved novelist and owner of NYC bookstore Books are Magic) proves in this touching, humorous, and eye-opening new novel… All Adults Here weaves a memorable tale about navigating some of our most important, and most maddening, relationships.” —Town and Country
“This new novel from New York Times bestselling author of The Vacationers and Modern Lover is at its core about family in all its loving, messy glory… It’s a page-turner that will make you think about what binds families together and drives them apart.” —Good Morning America
“All Adults Here is a novel about how we try and fail at every age and yet somehow survive. It is brimming with kindness, forgiveness, humor and love and yet (magically) is also a page turner that held me captive until it was finished. This is Emma Straub’s absolute best and the world will love it. I love it.”—Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth
“A totally engaging and smart book about the absolutely marvelous messiness of what makes up family; a wonderful book.” —Elizabeth Strout, New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Olive Kitteridge and Olive, Again
“Straub etches in the comforting, often funny truths readers love her for. Like us, her characters are always getting older but never feeling quite old enough to do the right thing, to be the people they want to be, to let go of the past, and they’re certainly never ready to die. An all-out celebration of the life force in ourselves and in our families. . . Straub’s novels are dearly beloved, and this might be her best yet.”—Booklist, STARRED
“Emma Straub’s All Adults Here will make you question your entire childhood, and how much your parents influenced it as you learn one mother’s perspective of what went right and what went wrong with her own family.”—Marie Claire
“As per usual, Straub’s writing is heartfelt and earnest, without tipping over the edge. There are a lot of issues at play here (abortion, bullying, IVF, gender identity, sexual predators) that Straub easily juggles, and her strong and flawed characters carry the day. This affecting family saga packs plenty of punch.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED
“No one writes family drama like Straub, and in her new novel All Adults Here, she brings the Strick family to life with her unique wit and wisdom. . . . It’s a heartfelt, grounded story about family dynamics, forgiveness, and the unavoidable effects we have on those we love.”—Buzzfeed
“Wise, funny and startlingly relatable.”—Pure Wow
“As always, Straub . . .draws her characters warmly, making them appealing in their self-centeredness and generosity, their insecurity and hope. . . . Straub has a sharp eye for her characters’ foibles and the details of their liberal, upper-middle-class milieu. With humor and insight, Straub creates a family worth rooting for.”—Kirkus
