All Adults Here By Emma Straub - A Perfect Read for COVID-19 Quarantine
"All Adults Here" is a book that gives everyone a dose of normal life, perfect for a quarantine read amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The book makes everybody feel what was once normal just when we needed it.
What Is "All Adults Here" About?
"All Adults Here" is a narrative ensemble of domestic drama. As Each character in the novel comes with its own defining voice, including an astute eight grader and a widowed grandmother who is adjusting to a possible new romance.
The story navigates through several generations of the Strick family, whose members could not seemingly escape the rich yet painful history of their ancestors. They live in a close-knit Hudson Valley town where everyone in the neighborhood knows exactly everybody's secrets.
Here's a description of the book on Good Reads:
"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 intentionally 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."
"All Adults Here" is a book that follows the Strick family as they wander around town meeting people and having awkward conversations.
The idea of a community lies at the heart of this novel. While many grew up in communities that respect anonymity, this novel speaks about a community with a carousel of memories they share with each other.
Why Is It Perfect For Your COVID-19 Quarantine Read?
Like many parents in this age and time, the 40-year old Emma Straub is working from home, juggling two jobs and tons of household work. While she is working double-time to promote her new book "All Adults Here'', she also helps manage a bookstore in Brooklyn that she and her husband owns.
She is also homeschooling her two kids, playing with them and breaking a lot of their fights.
Amid the restrictions brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, the novelist could not have anticipated that her work would take a whole new meaning. While many are forced to stay at home with the people they love the most, they are getting reacquainted with each other's annoying quirks and irritating habits.
People may have begun to wonder how they survived to live together without losing their minds.
The tensions presented in Staub's fiction are rather universal. What happens when people who used to love each other actually outgrow each other? When people choose to keep their personal secrets from their families, who are they actually protecting?
"All Adults Here" is Straub's fourth novel, and it's a masterpiece of domestic drama and the ensemble that completes it.
What makes it a good quarantine read? It is everyone's life in fiction. It may be describing your life, or perhaps it could give you an idea of what you could do to deal with it.
As the pandemic changes how everyone lives, this novel is a unique reminder that sometimes, a "new normal" has to be created.
Whether it is born out of a pandemic or something brought about by a change of heart, change is inevitable. In order to survive, people will have to learn to adapt, take risks, and accept that they may have to let go of things they have become used to.
Other Book Recommendations
"All Adults Here" is a novel that is brimming with kindness, humor, forgiveness and love. If you want to take the journey with Straub and her amazing narrative of what's normal, you may also read "Other People We Married" and "Modern Love."
Her novels are rich in a narrative of people everyone can simply relate to.
