Modern Lovers - Softcover

Straub, Emma

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0735208166 ISBN 13: 9780735208162

Publisher: Random House Large Print, 2016

Synopsis

"It's 'Friends' meets 'Almost Famous' meets the beach read you'll be recommending all summer." -TheSkimm

From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Vacationers, 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.

About this title

Review:

Praise for "The Vacationers"
"For those unable to jet off to a Spanish island this summer, reading "The Vacationers" may be the next-best thing. . . . [A] gorgeously written novel . . . When I turned the last page, I felt as I often do when a vacation is over: grateful for the trip and mourning its end." "The New York Times Book Review"
"There's nothing more addictive than a darkly funny dysfunctional domestic drama. Straub's novel set during a fraught family vacation in Mallorca is pretty much the perfect beach read." "Entertainment Weekly"
"Emma Straub puts the fun back in dysfunction." "San Francisco Chronicle"
"Delicious . . . richly riveting . . ." The Vacationers" offers all the delights of a fluffy, read-it-with-sunglasses-on-the-beach read, made substantial by the exceptional wit, insight, intelligence and talents of its author." "People" (four stars)"

From the Back Cover:

'Has all the pleasures of Anne Tyler's compelling family portraits . . . with a Lorrie Moore-like sense of the absurdities of contemporary life' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.
Summer in the city . . .
Elizabeth, Zoe and Andrew met at college, had a band, grew up, settled in New York and somehow twenty years passed by. Still living round the corner from one another (and in each other's pockets) they're watching as their kids come of age one hot summer. But just as the kids start making those first hesitant steps into adulthood, so it's the parents who find that the lives they've so carelessly stitched together begin to slowly unravel . . .

'Really entertaining. The characters are complex and likeable. It's one of those stories that makes you realise that life really does run away from you' Guardian

'Immersive, rich, screamingly funny' USA Today

'Straub's characters thrum off the page. The sort of witty and relatable summer title you'll devour with a contented smack of the lips' Irish Independent

'Funny yet tart, warm yet incisive. I adored it' Red

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Large Print
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0735208166
• ISBN 13: 9780735208162
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496