Excerpt
“Coming of age with a quick wit and a sharp eye…
The Adults is as idiosyncratic as it is stirring.” -
New York Times An “outstanding coming-of-age novel….one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. Ms. Espach's coup is to chart Emily's growth through her maturing sense of humor.”
The Wall Street Journal “Wry rather than out-loud funny, laced with melancholy and angst, this book is an enviable first effort.”
Kirkus "Alison Espach has written her debut novel in one of the most authentic and memorable voices I have ever read. Finding myself on every page of this heartbreaking and hysterically funny book, I began to have the same strange suspicion I had the first time I read Salinger's
The Catcher in the Rye, Yates's
Revolutionary Road and Eugenides's
The Virgin Suicides: the impossible belief that the author might have written this book specifically for me. Like those classics,
The Adults is wholly original, astonishingly true, and absolutely vital." -Stefan Merrill Block
"With shining prose and razor-sharp wit, Alison Espach writes about the murky landscape between childhood and adulthood, the mistakes and misunderstandings, the betrayals and the beauty. THE ADULTS is a piercing and authentic journey through adolescence, filled with squeamish missteps and laugh-out-loud insights, wrenching heartache, and characters so rich and tenderly drawn that one can’t help but love them through all their flaws and failures. I absolutely adored this book." Aryn Kyle, author of The God of Animals and Boys and Girls Like You and Me "Every single sentence has tragicomic verve in The Adults. Alison Espach's coming-of-age novel is jaggedly funny, moving when you least expect it, and wise beyond its years. Parental guidance is strictly optional to enjoy this gem of a debut." -Teddy Wayne, author of Kapitoil
"In her impossible-to-put-down debut novel, Alison Espach manages to marry youthful exuberance with deep adult sorrow, quick-silver wit with trenchant observation. The world of The Adults is a familiar one but the voice and the brain at work here are anything but, sparkling and unexpectable and irresistibly wise." -Kathryn Davis, author of The Thin Place A “smart first novel.” People Magazine