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Title details for All Adults Here by Emma Straub - Available

All Adults Here

A Novel

by Emma Straub
Emily Rankin
Audiobook
1 of 3 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 3 copies available
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK!
"In a time when all we want is hope, it’s a beautiful book to reach for." -Jenna Bush Hager
"Brimming with kindness, forgiveness, humor and love and yet (magically) 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

“An immensely charming and warmhearted book. It’s a vacation for the soul.”—Vox

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, and the forthcoming novel This Time Tomorrow.
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 4, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593166734
      • File size: 319317 KB
      • Duration: 11:05:14

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from February 3, 2020
      In Straub’s witty, topical fourth novel (after Modern Lovers), members of a Hudson Valley family come to terms with adolescence, aging, sexuality, and gender. After 68-year-old widow Astrid Strick witnesses an acquaintance get struck and killed by a bus in the center of Clapham, N.Y., she feels compelled to come clean with her children about her new relationship with Birdie, the local hairdresser, before it's too late (“there were always more school buses,” she reasons). Astrid’s kids have their own issues to contend with. Thirty-seven-year-old Porter, pregnant via a “stud farm” (aka a sperm bank), is having an affair with her old high school boyfriend, while Elliott, the oldest, is preoccupied with a hush-hush business proposal. Nicky, the youngest, and his wife have shipped their only child, 13-year-old Cecilia, up to live with Astrid after a messy incident at her Brooklyn school involving online pedophilia. Despite Cecilia’s fear of not fitting in, she finds friendship with a boy who longs to be recognized as a girl but isn’t ready to come out as trans. 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.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Emily Rankin's expressive narration and graceful tone guide listeners through this sympathetic story of the extended Strick family, whose members reside in a fictitious upper-middle-class town in the Hudson Valley. Anyone who has ever been part of an extended family--either as a parent, child, sibling, aunt, uncle, or grandparent--will find much that is familiar here. Rankin superbly distinguishes three generations, giving each character a unique and compelling persona. She expresses their rich emotional texture and exposes their vulnerabilities and longings. Listeners may even shed a tear or two as Rankin evokes the powerful scenes in which family members come to better understand and support one another. A relatable story and an absorbing listen. M.J. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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