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.
"To describe Emma Straub's novel All Adults Here without using the word 'charming' is like trying to describe an accordion without using your hands. But winsome and big-hearted do fine to characterize Ms. Straub's loosely knit, multigenerational fourth novel ...Tight, flinty Astrid...seems like close kin to Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge." - The Wall Street Journal
"A master analyst of romantic relationships, Straub trains her eye on family dynamics and small-town life in this witty and wise tale." - People Magazine
"Delivers a Dose of Normal Life, Right When We Need It. . . Straub cements her status as a master of the domestic ensemble drama." - TIME
"Emma Straub's warm-hearted fourth novel confirms her reign as a patron saint of delayed adolescence." - NPR
"'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 ome 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
"Undeniably pleasing . . . a kind of thinking-person's beach read that's maybe all the better for arriving in these strange, landlocked times." - Entertainment Weekly
"Emma Straub's writing is witty, informal and deceptively simple, drawing readers in as if they're having a conversation with a close friend." - BookPage
"All Adults Here is a master class on the small-scale American drama. . . this warm, optimistic novel argues that one should keep trying, regardless. All Adults Here affirms the value of community and family, no matter the strife that may rise up within them." - Vogue
"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
"A totally engaging and smart book about the absolutely marvelous messiness of what makes up family; a wonderful book." - Elizabeth Strout, New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Olive Kitteridge and Olive, Again
"Emma Straub's All Adults Here will make you question your entire childhood, and how much your parents influenced it as you learn one mother's perspective of what went right and what went wrong with her own family." - Marie Claire
"No one writes family drama like Straub, and in her new novel All Adults Here, she brings the Strick family to life with her unique wit and wisdom. . . . It's a heartfelt, grounded story about family dynamics, forgiveness, and the unavoidable effects we have on those we love." - Buzzfeed
