Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
“‘Literary sunshine’ is a good way to think of Straub’s work. Her writing and tone are consistently bright and straightforward; her approach to character is warm and generous...The main pleasures of All Adults Here come from Straub’s wry comic instincts (a pair of hyperaggressive twin toddlers are hilariously appalling) and her gimlet eye for cultural observation...Her wit extends out from the individual characters into a larger commentary on the difficulties of becoming an adult, making this an especially rich addition to the author’s body of work.” The New York Times
Review
“Emma Straub's warm-hearted fourth novel confirms her reign as a patron saint of delayed adolescence.” NPR
Review
"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
About the Author
Emma Straub is the New York Times-bestselling author of three other novels The Vacationers, Modern Lovers, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married. Her books have been published in twenty countries. She and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.