AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARA PARADE BEST BOOK of 2020 * A GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK of 2020 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“Literary sunshine.”—New York Times“Brimming with kindness, forgiveness, humor and love and yet (magically) also a page … Times
“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
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.
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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.
Emma Straub has peopled All Adults Here with three generations of a family, eight flesh and blood, complex, decent, fully human characters, and set them about disappointing and uplifting each other in a charming Hudson Valley small town that’s rife with both generosity and mean girl bullies. Straub writes about the blind spots, failures, and occasional stunning successes of parenting, the effects of birth order, gender identity, abortion, pregnancy, adultery, and coming out–an array of social issues–in a light-touched, almost breezy way while never ignoring or minimizing the real pain and critical self-reflection of her principal characters. There’s warmth and wit in her storytelling; she really likes these people, and it’s nearly impossible for the reader not to, so I didn’t even try. It’s a wonderful novel.
A totally engaging and smart book about the absolutely marvelous messiness of what makes up family; a wonderful book.
I really enjoyed this book. Astrid, one of the main characters was nostalgically reminiscent of Olive Kitteridge. I also really enjoyed the dynamic portrayed between her three adult children – their squabbles and loyalties. I am an only child and have three adult children sheltering in place with me and I found the book very comforting – maybe we/they will all still love each other when this is over 🙂 this was an uplifting, happy read, great observations and turns of phrase.
Not my favorite
Dysfunctional family. Nothing new.
I had an opportunity to get a Kindle copy cheap so I jumped on it. I’ve seen so many others read and review it and wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
For me, it was just okay.
It was a story with many stories in it because of the vast cast of characters. It was relatable at times. I appreciated that these people coud have been any one of my neighbors or friends. They felt like they had real problems at times. It’s just that it felt like a cluster of a group of peoples’ lives in a period of time and what happened in their every day lives. It wasn’t anything magical fantastical though.
I still would like to read her other stories. She has a flow to her writing that works for me. Just not so boring of a story would be great. I don’t need to read about every day lives when I live it. I hope that make sense, ’cause it does to me. 2.5/5
All Adults Here reminded me of both Elizabeth Strout’s Olive and Anne Tyler’s families. Many varieties of out-of-the-ordinary relationships were included in the narrative, from simple adultery to transsexual, but told in such a way as not to be alarming. Reading this book would be helpful for in transitioning from what was accepted in the past to the world in which we find ourselves today.
I had read many good reviews of this book, but when reading it, it seemed to go too many ways at once. There was little continuity from one chapter to another. Some of the information in the book had nothing to do with the characters or the plot. Every buzz word or current dilemma was added to make the book seemed up-to-date and current. This was more distracting than anything else. I was glad to get to the end of the book. The ending did not seem to be complete.
Not a favorite. Ending seemed a little Pat and plot contrived.
A woman sees her acquaintance hit and suddenly killed by a school bus, then reevaluates her own life. Lovely writing about wonderfully quirky characters.
An uninspiring story about a multi-generational family full of good intentions, challenges, & hidden secrets within a small Hudson Valley town. Might appeal to those looking for a light read about a non-traditional family.
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…the superficial approach to a broad range of hot topics ranging from sexuality & gender identity to artificial insemination & abortion.
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…the lively cast of characters, their connections & secrets. I enjoyed the refreshingly realistic adult sibling relationships & how home life impacted them differently.
All Adults Here by Emma Straub is a slow burn literary fiction novel that is all about family. There are a lot of different viewpoints and a lot of people to keep track of, but I slowly caught on and had them all straight by the end. I listened to the audio (surprise!) and the narrator, Emily Rankin, did such an amazing job. There is a decent dose of humor, but Straub also decided to tackle a bunch of different topics and really only lightly touches on these subjects. However, there are so many nuggets along the way, and I was a huge fan of the assorted viewpoints and characters.
I think that All Adults Here is perfect on audio so if you can do it that way then that is how I would suggest ‘reading’ it. I highly prefer slower burns on audio and was really glad that’s what I did with this book. I am also happy that I had the physical copy though since there are so many characters, so if you can do what I did that would be even better and will make it easier to follow. I just love the way Straub plotted her characters and the kids in the book touched my heart. I think I loved Astrid’s thirteen-year-old granddaughter Cecelia the most and was rooting for her while she struggled with some inner turmoil. Usually I don’t love viewpoints of younger people, but hers totally worked for me in this book.
There are some valuable lessons sprinkled in All Adults Here, and I was very satisfied with how the book ended. There are a lot of mixed reviews for this book and I was so happy it worked so well for me. I really enjoyed Straub’s writing style and I have decided I finally need to go through her backlist, which I will most likely tackle via audio. If you are a fan of literary fiction, author’s that tackle a bunch of issues in one book, and slower burns then I would definitely recommend All Adults Here to you.
Thank you to Libro.fm and the publisher for my advance listening copy. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
One can count on Emma Straub to deliver a keen read, she’s such a close observer of human behavior. This book doesn’t disappoint on that score. But what really caught me here was how she so deftly revealed the truth for all of us with adult children–you never know what you did to help or hinder your child’s development–and the great surprise here is the ultimate truth–you yourself are developing at the same time you are parenting–forever!
This story never felt like it came together. More like multiple mini stories revolving around each other. I like The Vacationers much better.
Got about 150 pages in and gave up.
It took me a few chapters to settle in, but once I did, I was in deep. I enjoyed getting to know the many different characters and it got me thinking about sibling and parent-child relationships—how they have the potential to evolve over the years, yet often get stuck in time.