Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
That title isn’t an insult. I’m in my early thirties, but the spouse and I have been together since I was 18, so even though the main characters have a few years on me, a lot of this felt familiar. The whole book felt kind of familiar – the characters, the plot points, the story beats, the writing itself – but in a good way. It’s like a Kate Spade dress. Nothing life changing, but comfortable and well crafted. We follow the three living members […]
Ugh, I didn’t enjoy this book in the slightest, which I guess makes sense since it fills the Not My Wheelhouse square for Bingo. The Vacationers is the story of a family from New York that goes on vacation to Mallorca, along with their oldest son’s girlfriend, and the best friend of the wife and his husband. I would use names here to help distinguish between characters but I’ve honestly forgotten half of them already. Man, I just. . . I really hated this book. […]
This was the second book in a row I read that featured a tangential connection to music (in this one, the adults in the novel had been in an often-referenced college band) and it definitely benefited in my esteem for that. I really didn’t like Goon Squad, so naturally I compared Modern Lovers to it, and it was so much the better of the two. Modern Lovers isn’t a book I would ordinarily select. “College friends and neighbors deal with their grownup lives and their kids bang” isn’t […]
The Vacationers (2014) by Emma Straub is another book I saw displayed at the library, and it caught my attention. I think I recognized the author from another reading list, and I decided to pick it up. There’s really not much to this book at first glance. The plot is that a family goes on vacation for two weeks in Spain. They’re well off and they have first world problems caused by their own angst and bad choices. What made this book interesting and fun to […]
I thoroughly enjoyed Straub’s debut novel, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, and feel we should gloss over the embarrassingly long time it took me to clock that she is daughter of Peter Straub. So when The Vacationers came along and seemed to be setting itself up to be everything Seating Arrangements should have been but wasn’t, I was sold. The blurb tells you it’s “an irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family’s two-week stay in Mallorca” […]
A few weeks ago, I read and enjoyed The Vacationers by Emma Straub. And upon finishing my review, promised myself two things. One, that I would seek out more of Emma’s work, and two, that I would solve the mystery of whether or not Emma was related to Peter Straub, one of my favorites. (Have you read Lost Boy, Lost Girl? No? Stop reading this right now and go read that, I’ll wait. It was awesome, right?) And now, here we are, two weeks later. I’ve read […]
