... bigly entertaining ... '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. Although essentially comic, Straub’s novels don’t avoid some of life’s harsh challenges. All Adults Here touches on fraught topics like coming out, gender identity, marital infidelity, abortion and predatory behavior, all while maintaining a feel-good mood that suggests most things will work out in the end ... Rather than constructing a tightly woven plot, Straub assembles a multigenerational cast of complex characters in an appealing setting, and stands back ... Part of the considerable pleasure of reading the novel comes from witnessing inner desires — or demons — gradually revealed, and then resolved ... The main pleasures of All Adults Here come from Straub’s wry comic instincts 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 ... If Straub resolves a few too many potential crises with cinematic ease, most readers will forgive her. Who among us isn’t in need of a happy ending right now? What could be more welcome than a novel that leaves you feeling optimistic about both the world and the muddle of your own life? Please, bring on the sunshine.
... delightful ... The family homestead is called the Big House—but what happens inside is so entertaining, the Stricks might as well be gathered under the Big Top ... Straub deftly weaves the various characters’ stories into a slice-of-life plot that builds slowly. The book is wide-ranging, squeezing in commentary on abortion, gender identity, bullying, sexual predators and more. It’s hip and of-the-moment, down to the lingo ... ripe with the kind of juicy gossip perfect for swapping with a favorite sibling via late-night, hushed phone calls. The Strick family is appealing in part because its members are recognizable: Astrid makes a convincing detached mother, and the other family members are familiar in their idiosyncrasies and grudges. Their problems could be – and probably have been—our problems ... deliciously funny and infectiously warm—a clever blend of levity and poignant insights. Straub’s flair for irony and wit shine, and she puts a fresh (and progressive) spin on the age-old multigenerational family saga ... an ideal read for anyone trapped at home with their family while self-isolating. Read it while hiding in your bedroom from the people who are driving you crazy, but who you’d go crazy without.
... delightful ... With a light touch, [Straub] highlights the impossibility of viewing yourself the way your family sees you and how that myopia leads to misunderstandings that can shape a dynamic for decades ... Straub handles her intergenerational cast of characters with humor and insight ... The ordinary lives Straub depicts here seem surprisingly poignant at this particular point in time: You can’t help but feel wistful at such blessed normality. Worrying about love affairs and family squabbles is a luxury compared with fretting about the toilet paper supply chain ... Still, this novel rings true, the wisdom that its characters gain well earned.
The skill of Straub’s writing is balancing soap opera-like plots with substantive emotional potency. With All Adults Here, Straub examines the ups and downs of small-town America with the critical eye of a skeptical urbanite ... Perhaps simply reading about ordinary people living ordinary lives while we experience a pandemic lockdown enhances the enticement. Straub effortlessly deposits details to expand these settings into fully physical places with a strong sense of identity. She leaves readers with the sense of having stood in the center of Clapham without ever having visited ... Straub has successfully constructed a moving narrative about a person not conforming to the mainstream seeking acceptance in the face of adversity, with emotional weight behind Robin’s transition, and anyone who has felt out of place can empathize with the character’s journey. Straub accurately captures the hurt and pain of being bullied ... Straub is upbeat. The world she has given us is optimistic. She wants us to feel good after reading All Adults Here while avoiding an overly saccharine tone. She navigates this fine line and succeeds in offering us the kind of world we want to live in ... Straub is a skilled storyteller. She weaves together complex, character-driven novels that allow us to wander in and out of their lives to share in the defining moments. All Adults Here is a solid escape to the pastoral lives we all sometimes wonder if we should endeavor to have. Even if it’s fiction, Straub has given us a world to hope for, to want to live in.
... delightful ... so entertaining ... Straub deftly weaves the various characters’ stories into a slice-of-life plot that builds slowly. The book is wide-ranging, squeezing in commentary on abortion, gender identity, bullying, sexual predators, and more. It’s hip and of-the-moment, down to the lingo ... deliciously funny and infectiously warm—a clever blend of levity and poignant insights. Straub’s flair for irony and wit shine, and she puts a fresh (and progressive) spin on the age-old multigenerational family saga. It's an ideal read for anyone trapped at home with their family while self-isolating. Read it while hiding in your bedroom from the people who are driving you crazy, but who you'd go crazy without.
Inevitably, some of these threads turn out to be more compelling than others, and the piling on of certain strenuously 2020 topics (trans kids, gentrification, late-in-life sexual fluidity) can feel a little too tidily invoked. But mostly, Straub is in her sweet spot; Like Celeste Ng or Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, she has the gift of finding freshness in familiar narratives through cleverly tweaked archetypes and small, clear observations ... If Adults hardly feels like the strongest of her offerings so far, there's still something undeniably pleasing about the low stakes and easy resolution of it all — a kind of thinking-person's beach read that's maybe all the better for arriving in these strange, landlocked times.
Reading Emma Straub’s breezy new novel All Adults Here left me with a pleasantly soothed feeling ... It’s a gentle, friendly book, a classic beach read that will work just fine even now, when most of us can’t go to the beach ... secrets will emerge as this family of well-meaning, basically decent people work really hard to figure out how to be kind and supportive to one another in the best possible way, and the entire process is so, so calming ... It helps that Straub writes the kind of serene, orderly sentences that allow you to trust her instantly. Her prose is straightforward and limpid, and you just know as you read that she has never once misplaced a word. She might have misplaced a pronoun, though. One supporting character in All Adults Here is trans, but although the character identifies as a girl, Straub consistently uses he/him pronouns for her whenever she’s dressed in boy’s clothes—and continues even when the character is narrating the story herself, as though her gender identity depends entirely on her wardrobe. It’s a disappointing false step for an author otherwise in complete control of her story. Still, All Adults Here remains an immensely charming and warmhearted book.
Emma Straub's warm-hearted fourth novel confirms her reign as a patron saint of delayed adolescence ... Her amiably dysfunctional characters make it clear that it's possible to grow old without growing up ... All Adults Here is somewhat overstuffed with what at times feels like a checklist of hot topics—teens dealing with online pedophiles, shaming, queerness and transexuality; ticking time clocks and sperm bank babies; sex with exes; checked-out parenting—but you'll enjoy the company of this sympathetic clan as Straub works her narrative to a well-earned cheery resolution.
All Adults Here tackles a laundry list of big-ticket items, any one of which could have commanded its own book: transgenderism, homosexuality, abortion, bullying, artificial insemination and extramarital affairs among them. Straub juggles the weighty topics with a feather-light touch, funny without being flip, with keen insights into how we evolve through every stage of life ... On its face, All Adults Here doesn’t seem like it should be as engaging as it is. Its conflicts are every day. The reader floats along a pleasant current of non-plot alongside a cast of characters made up of good people trying hard to be better ... It’s a credit to Straub’s gifts of wit and observation that she’s made such a loving book so alive. Reading All Adults Here, you feel like maybe your life isn’t so small, that its minor joys and pitfalls are worthy of literature. If only Straub could be the one to document it.
... excellent ... All Adults Here is a portrait of norms at work in a little, white town as much as it is about one single family, and over the novel’s course Straub builds a strong critique of the ways 'respectability' can breed shame. The frantic plot is set at roughly the pace of a Mad Max movie, but that’s what keeps things entertaining ... While All Adults Here has some weaknesses (a too-neat happy ending, a sense of queer people being faintly magical), it would be unfair to demand more depth from a novel that isn’t aspiring to it. Underneath the soap-operatic machinations of the plot, Straub skewers a certain slice of bourgeois upstate society here. The oscillation between satire and sentimentality can be jarring, but then again we all need a shake sometimes.
... eight characters...are all endearing in their disarmingly muddleheaded or abjectly truth-seeking ways ... moments are gasp-worthy ... Straub....belongs in the company of Cathleen Schine, Tom Perrotta and other fiction writers who understand that the degree of humor that can be teased from family drama is often directly proportional to the extent of the family's misery.
No one engages a reader quite like Emma Straub. I was 30 pages into her warmhearted new novel, All Adults Here, before I even realized it. Her writing is witty, informal and deceptively simple, drawing readers in as if they’re having a conversation with a close friend ... Straub imbues the novel with her trademark humor and comic turns of phrase, particularly Porter’s one-liners. Straub has taken on a lot of issues—gender politics, abortion, bullying, sexual predators—and it’s to her credit that the subject matter never seems heavy-handed or detracts from the momentum. The characters are believable, and events unfold naturally.
...delightful ... All Adults Here proceeds to entertainingly weave its characters’ numerous plotlines ... The novel’s keen analysis of family dynamics feels candid and representative of sociological truths, such as the shifting alliances in families, the exacting consequences of birth order, and the way we often magnify our family’s faults ... Straub writes about numerous social matters such as gentrification and queerness, some more successfully than others ... But despite that, All Adults Here is a testament to Straub’s ability to infuse the comic with wisdom.
The sudden death of a frenemy, hit by a school bus, knocks widowed Strick family matriarch Astrid’s own life slightly off course ... the joy is in the setup ... Straub etches in the comforting, often funny truths readers love her for ... An all-out celebration of the life force in ourselves and in our families ... Straub’s novels are dearly beloved, and this might be her best yet.
...witty, topical ... As per usual, Straub’s writing is heartfelt and earnest, without tipping over the edge. There are a lot of issues at play here (abortion, bullying, IVF, gender identity, sexual predators) that Straub easily juggles, and her strong and flawed characters carry the day.
As always, Straub (Modern Lovers, 2016, etc.) draws her characters warmly, making them appealing in their self-centeredness and generosity, their insecurity and hope ... Straub has a sharp eye for her characters' foibles and the details of their liberal, upper-middle-class milieu. With humor and insight, Straub creates a family worth rooting for.
