Modern Lovers (Straub)

Modern Lovers 
Emma Straub, 2016
Penguin Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594634673


Summary
A smart, highly entertaining novel about a tight-knit group of friends from college— and what it means to finally grow up, well after adulthood has set in.
 
Friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth and Andrew and Zoe have watched one another marry, buy real estate, and start businesses and families, all while trying to hold on to the identities of their youth.

But nothing ages them like having to suddenly pass the torch (of sexuality, independence, and the ineffable alchemy of cool) to their own offspring.

Back in the band's heyday, Elizabeth put on a snarl over her Midwestern smile, Andrew let his unwashed hair grow past his chin, and Zoe was the lesbian all the straight women wanted to sleep with. Now nearing fifty, they all live within shouting distance in the same neighborhood deep in gentrified Brooklyn, and the trappings of the adult world seem to have arrived with ease.

But the summer that their children reach maturity (and start sleeping together), the fabric of the adult lives suddenly begins to unravel, and the secrets and revelations that are finally let loose—about themselves, and about the famous fourth band member who soared and fell without them—can never be reclaimed.

Straub packs wisdom and insight and humor together in a satisfying book about neighbors and nosiness, ambition and pleasure, the excitement of youth, the shock of middle age, and the fact that our passions—be they food, or friendship, or music—never go away, they just evolve and grow along with us. (LitLovers.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979-80
• Raised—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City


Emma Straub is an American author three novels and a short story collection. Raised on Manhattan's Upper West side, she now lives with her husband and two young sons in Brooklyn.

Emma comes by writing naturally: her father is Peter Straub, an award winning writer of horror fiction, a fact which makes even Emma admit to a belief in a writing gene. Here's what she told Michele Filgate of Book Slut:

I believe the writing gene is located just behind the gene for enjoying red wine and just in front of the gene for watching soap operas, both of which I also inherited from my father. What I do know for sure is that I watched my father write for a living my entire childhood, and I understood that it was a job like any other, that one had to do all day, every day. I think a lot of people have the fantasy that a writer sits around in coffee shops all day, waiting for the muse to appear.

So while genes may play a role, so does hard work and grit: determined to become a writer, she pushed on even after her first four books were turned down. As she told Alexandra Alter of the New York Times,

They all got rejected by every single person in publishing, in the world. It’s still true that I will go to a publishing party or event, and the first thing I will think of is, "I know who you are, you rejected novels 2 and 4."

It's nice to think that today Straub is having the last laugh.

Attending Oberlin College, Straub received her B.A. in 2002. She went on to earn her M.F.A. at the University of Wisconsin where she studied with author Lorrie Moore. Returning to New York, she worked for a number of years at the independent Book Court bookstore in Brooklyn.

Her novels include Modern Lovers (2016), The Vacationers (2014), and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures (2012). Her story collection is titled Other People We Married (2011). Straub's fiction and nonfiction have been published in Vogue, New York Magazine, Tin House, New York Times, Good Housekeeping, and Paris Review Daily. She is also a contributing writer to Rookie. (From .)

Book Reviews
In all of her novels, Emma Straub seems to peer into her characters’ hearts in a most believable way. Her latest is no different: in Modern Lovers, we meet up with way cool college bandmates three decades later. Zoe, Elizabeth, and Andrew—now middle-aged—live near one another in gentrified Brooklyn, yet despite their trendy, almost precious life-styles, Straub manages to bring them to life, far beyond any level of caricature.  READ MORE.
Keddy Ann Outlaw - LitLovers


Ms. Straub writes with such verve and sympathetic understanding of her characters…[that] this novel has all the pleasures of reading one of Anne Tyler's compelling family portraits…. In [Straub's] capable hands…even the most hackneyed occasions are transformed into revealing or comic moments…. She captures the jagged highs and lows of adolescence with freshness and precision, and the decades-long relationships of old college friends with a wry understanding of how time has both changed (and not changed) old dynamics.... [D]eftly and thoughtfully written.
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani


[I]n Emma Straub’s witty third novel...[to] be once young and briefly famous and painfully of-the-­moment and then morph into ­regular-people middle age is...insulting, as if your whole life is the worst Instagram fail. And this is where we find the novel’s 40-something friends, past millennial hipness and on into hot flashes.... Modern Lovers hurries to tie up its loose ends, and the interwoven climaxes seem sludgy. The final chapter employs a lazy literary device, a series of announcements...that would seem more at home in the closing credits of Animal House. But up until then, Modern Lovers is a wise, sophisticated romp through the pampered middle-aged neuroses of urban softies.
Alex Kuczynski - New york Times Book Review


Summer in the city has never felt so good.... Modern Lovers celebrates the updated look and feel of familial love and all of its complexities. Straub’s clever and perceptive observations on growing up are gentle reminders that coming of age isn’t just for kids.
Washington Post


In Modern Lovers, Straub’s new intertwined families are stuck in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, for the summer, but there are plenty of fireworks—including a teen romance and a potential movie about the friends’ punk-rock past.
Newsday


[Modern Lovers] has the smart, cool sensibility of Straub's other novels, and you're sure to love this one just as much.
Elle


Straub lets her characters fall apart and come together in their own messy, refreshingly human ways— always older, sometimes wiser, but never quite done coming of age.
Entertainment Weekly


With a real-estate agent, a chef, a yogi 'guru,' and teens sneaking off to do what teens do when teens sneak off— Straub’s latest has something for everyone.
Marie Claire


Bestseller Emma Straub gives us an insightful look into middle age, parenthood, and the funny way that passions never fade, no matter how much time passes by.
Harper’s Bazaar


[Straub] sets her observational wit on three middle-aged friends (former college bandmates) who find themselves in a crisis of identity as their now-grown children head off to college themselves.
Huffington Post


(Starred review.)Straub spins her lighthearted but psychologically perceptive narrative with a sure touch [and]...excels in establishing a sense of place.... Events move at a brisk pace, and surprises...enliven the denouement.... [A] warmly satisfying novel.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [E]ngaging.... Sprinkled with humor and insight, this is a Brooklyn novel with heart. Straub's characters are well rounded and realistic; even the teenagers are sympathetic.... [A] drama...built around the small moments of life. —Melanie Kindrachuk, Stratford P.L., Ont.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) [I]n Straub's fond gaze, [Brooklyn] feels like an enchanted land out of a Shakespearan comedy.... She's a precise and observant writer whose...characters are a quirky and interesting bunch, well aware of their own good fortune, and it's a pleasure spending time with them.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Modern Lovers explores the concept of aging. How do you think these characters feel about their own journeys into adulthood? How does the adults’ description of youth compare with the teenagers’ experience or description of youth? What about their different perspectives on adulthood? Which of them—the adults or the teens—is more accurate? Is one perspective more true than the other?
 
2. Lydia soared on to become a star, leaving the rest of Kitty’s Mustache behind. How does Lydia’s success—and subsequent death—affect the current actions of these characters? Specifically, Elizabeth, Zoe, and Andrew—do they see themselves in opposition to Lydia? What if she hadn’t died?
 
3. Do you think Andrew was right in lying to Elizabeth about his relationship with Lydia? How might things have been different if he had told her the truth from the start?
 
4. Should Elizabeth have gone through with the Kitty’s Mustache documentary, even without Andrew’s approval? Considering the events that are set in motion, do you think this decision helps their marriage or hinders it in the end?
 
5. Does the fire at Hyacinth, though devastating at the time, actually lead to a happier marriage for Zoe and Jane? Why or why not?
 
6. Are Ruby and Harry a good romantic fit? Are they too young to know whether they are?
 
7. Self-image plays an important role in Modern Lovers. All of these characters have specific ideas about themselves, and often, the realities don’t quite match. Discuss how the characters want to be seen, in comparison with who they actually are.
 
8. Discuss how the characters' friendships change over the years—from college to early parenthood to middle age. How are their relationships with one another and their perceptions of themselves linked? How does one affect the other?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

top of page (summary)