Afbeelding van de auteur.

Emma Straub

Auteur van The Vacationers

14+ Werken 4,936 Leden 298 Besprekingen Favoriet van 3 leden

Over de Auteur

Emma Straub is an author, a bookseller, and a staff writer for Rookie. Her fiction and non-fiction works have been published in The Paris Review Daily, Time, and The New York Times. Her novels include Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, Other People We Married, The Vacationers and Modern Lovers. toon meer (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder

Bevat de naam: Emma Straub

Werken van Emma Straub

The Vacationers (2014) 1,427 exemplaren
All Adults Here (2020) 1,022 exemplaren
This Time Tomorrow (2022) 986 exemplaren
Modern Lovers (2016) 898 exemplaren
Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures (2012) 379 exemplaren
Other People We Married (2011) 138 exemplaren
Very Good Hats (2023) 60 exemplaren
Fly Over State (2009) 15 exemplaren
Reading Is Magic: A Book Log for Families (2021) — Voorwoord — 3 exemplaren
Gaga Mistake Day (2024) 3 exemplaren
Moodsad armastajad (2017) 2 exemplaren
Feriegs̆terne (2016) 1 exemplaar

Gerelateerde werken

xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths (2013) — Medewerker — 274 exemplaren
Mythic Journeys: Retold Myths and Legends (2019) — Medewerker — 55 exemplaren

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40-year-old Alice travels back in time to her 16th birthday party, and makes some changes that she hopes will alter her future.

What a spectacularly emotional book about time travel. Alice moves past being mired in her own regrets, past the fear of her father's death and her compulsion to control the death, and into a better understanding of how love functioned in her life. Honestly, what would anyone do with time travel other than go visit the people that they have loved?
 
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bexaplex | 57 andere besprekingen | Mar 4, 2024 |
2.5 stars. Disappointing. This was so saccharine I wanted to DNF it after the first part. I forced myself to read it only to be rewarded with more cliches. The only interesting character here was the dad, and he was not explored very deeply.
Everything in here is surface level, and even the 90s nostalgia didn’t do much to make it more bearable. This book could have been a lot better, but it felt so superficial to me.
 
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ZeljanaMaricFerli | 57 andere besprekingen | Mar 4, 2024 |
I read everything by Emma Straub. I love her work. When I saw this one I hadn't read yet, I got it from the library. I didn't read anything about what it is about. Turns out it is about time travel--and I don't care for books about time travel.
The relationship between Alice, the main character, and her father, Leonard, and the one between Alice and her best friend Sam are the best parts of the book. Straub is an excellent writer, and this book is no exception. I just didn't care for the time travel!
Alice sits by her father's bedside as he is dying, over a period of time. She works at the school she attended herself, and although she enjoys it, wonders if she's missing out on something. She likes being single, but wonders if she should be with someone (although early in the novel she turns down her boyfriend's proposal). I like Alice. I like most of the characters. I'm just not sure where Straub was going this time, and/or why she chose this time travel theme.
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cherybear | 57 andere besprekingen | Mar 2, 2024 |
Modern Lovers is one of those novels that doesn’t deal with anything new or over the top exciting, but is still very difficult to put down. It’s full of domestic drama – relationships, work life and teenage angst – that takes place over the summer. There are multiple characters with their own issues, big and small. I found it fascinating, perhaps due to Emma Straub’s skills in crafting the world and concerns of her characters.

The story is about three old university friends; Elizabeth, Andrew and Zoe who live within a stone’s throw of each other in a neighbourhood of Brooklyn. Elizabeth and Andrew are married to each other and live with teenage sone Harry. He’s very well behaved; Andrew is a drifter, unable to stick with a job likely due to family money. Elizabeth is a real estate agent – it’s not a forever job, but she’s good at it. Zoe works with wife Jane at their local restaurant and tears her hair out at their daughter Ruby, who is rebellious and doesn’t look like she’s going to college in the fall. What binds the three together is not only their friendship, but that they co-wrote a song that defined a generation. Now a movie is being made of former bandmate Lydia’s life and they are being asked to sign over the rights. But this summer, that’s not their biggest problem. Harry and Ruby fall in love and get in trouble. Jane and Zoe are on the brink of divorce. Andrew falls in with a yoga group slash cult and Elizabeth tries to hold it together for everyone until secrets from the past spill out. It’s messy with big and small dramas.

The characters of Modern Lovers aren’t always endearing. In fact, they all have something that is irritating on various levels. Rather than detract away from my enjoyment of the story, it added to it. The characters (and their creator) aren’t afraid to act foolishly, stupidly or be obstinate just because. There are some complex interactions, made more tricky because of each character’s inherent biases and nature. I quite liked Elizabeth and Zoe, who both had different ways of dealing with things. Andrew, with his aimless wanderings, unhindered by a job or money worries, was grating because of his lack of knowledge of how the world actually worked. He came across as more of a caricature than the other adults.

At the heart, Modern Lovers is about relationships. Old love and new love, love that’s wearing thin and love that’s growing. It’s never constant, with the characters getting frustrated with each other and their younger selves. Brooklyn also acts as an anchoring character, with each character having strong ties to their local area and reluctance to move on. It’s not a book with a fast paced plot, rather a gentle exploration of interactions between and within generations.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com
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½
 
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birdsam0610 | 39 andere besprekingen | Feb 17, 2024 |

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Statistieken

Werken
14
Ook door
3
Leden
4,936
Populariteit
#5,090
Waardering
½ 3.5
Besprekingen
298
ISBNs
124
Talen
11
Favoriet
3

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