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"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 years 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 13-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"--… (más)
My first Emma Straub experience and it was a good one. This review needs to be broken into two parts: the book and the writing.
Part One: All Adults Here.
There are no giants in this book and no villains. Nothing will stand out as an ah-ha moment, and you won't be haunted because of shock value after reading it. There is an abundance of truth and openness about how the family is generationally dysfunctional in ways, perfect in others, closeted and open simultaneously, and just as crazy, unpredictable, and loyal as yours.
There is a lot of head nodding, mm-hmm moments where you will recognize yourself, your siblings, or even your parent in one or another character. You will see that what you thought was uniquely off about your own family isn't. And that what you thought was remarkably special to your relationship is also noteworthy in others.
In other words, All Adults Here will help you open your eyes to family, its imperfections, and its constraints. You will watch Cecilia be sent to live with her grandmother at age 13 because she did the right thing but was bullied because of it; it was easier on her parents to remove her than deal with it. You will see Astrid, the matriarch, find love in the arms of a woman after being a widow for decades. As the firstborn, Elliot will finally be able to express the pressures of the same. Porter, the unwed, pregnant by choice from a sperm bank, still having an affair with her high-school sweetheart middle child, sees she is loved by her mother and both her older and younger brothers. And Nicholas, oh, precious, last born, never at fault, Nickey shows his downfalls and fears just like his siblings.
Set in small town USA, the townspeople are just as nosy and awful and loving and loyal and plagued with turmoil as in any other town; we all hate to love where we are from and couldn't imagine wanting to be from anywhere else if we were being honest. You will fall in love with some of the ancillary characters, root for Robin to find herself, and hope that Sidney falls off the float.
That is All Adults Here. I love this book. It is a book about nothing and everything and is an important book to read if you belong to a family.
Part Two: Emma Straub.
What an insightful writer Ms. Straub is. She captures the tiniest of nuances in grand ways without making a spectacle. In one stroke she can paralyze you by seeing your deepest secrets and open your mind while allowing you to feel okay about all of it. She is a rare writer that requires you must read every. single. word. Because if you don't, you might have missed something. Scratch that; you will miss something.
Take your time, read every word, and think about it. Put it into the context of your own life and come out the other side knowing you are not alone with how upside down according to the perfection on social media your life is. You are okay.
Family dynamics when long time widowed mother introduces her female partner to the family. Interesting but confusing with the non -gender specific names, like Porter and August. It was OK. ( )
This novel has plenty of things going on, all centred around the Strick family and Astrid, mother of three grown-up children. She and two of her children live in a small town in the Hudson Valley. Astrid witnesses an accident involving a woman she knows and this gives her a jolt reminding her our time here is limited and she sets out to be honest from now on. Her granddaughter, Cecelia, comes to stay.with Astrid and Astrid tells her family her big secret. The reader meets all Astrid's children and each of them has issues around parenting and being adults. One has two young children and has purchased the vacant shop in the centre of town, another is pregnant and having an affair with a married man and another is struggling to support his daughter. Cecilia also has stuff going on and with her friend August. As I said there is a lot going on. Not all the ends are tied by the finish of the novel so if that is important to you then it isn't the read for you. I found it to be a solid read that kept me interested, I never got lost with who was who despite the big cast and it has a cosy family feel. ( )
A witty, romantic novel that follows the matriarch of the Strick family, Astrid, as she navigates the complexities of family, love, and identity. When Astrid witnesses a bus accident that forces her to confront her own mortality, she begins to reexamine her relationships with her adult children and the secrets that have been kept within the family. Straub's distinctive style and voice make this both a poignant and humorous read. ( )
The author hits a LOT of hot button issues, and there's a lot going on in this story (infidelity, gender, sexual orientation, abortion, and more). Some of it I found infuriating; some of it was just not that exciting. As an audiobook, it kept my attention enough to keep going, but the sheer number of issues kept the author from going very deep into any of them. ( )
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Every feeling you're showing Is a boomerang you're throwing —ABBA
No one's easy to love, Don't look back, my dear, just say you tried —Sharon Van Etten
You love to fail, that's all you love. —The Magnetic Fields
Dedicatoria
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
For my parents, who did their best, and for my children, for whom I am doing mine
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Astrid Strick had never liked Barbara Baker, not for a single day of their forty-year acquaintance, but when Barbara was hit and killed by the empty, speeding school bus at the intersection of Main and Morrison streets on the eastern side of the town roundabout, Astrid knew that her life had changed, the shock of which was indistinguishable from relief.
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Astrid had seen death up close before, but not like this, not on the street like a raccoon.
Birdie also cut hair at the Heron Meadows, the assisted living facility on the edge of the Clapham border, and she had a certain sangfroid approach to the mortal coil. Everyone shuffled, in the end.
And now she was pregnant with a girl. Science worked, and miracles happened. The two were not mutually exclusive.
"You can still go back next year," his mom said. There was an internal countdown. August had one more summer before aging out. Like a stuffed animal on a teenager's bed, his days were numbered.
No one laughed at gorgeous white men. It was a design flaw in the universe.
Being a kid meant being in a constant state of transition, no matter what.
according to her dad, Elliot had always been uptight, and everyone knew that uptight people couldn't sing.
There were some people who just needed to be married, who felt like they were only wearing one shoe when they were alone.
"Oh, is that the face you make when you have to imagine a woman doing something just because she wants to? Do you know what year it is? It's the year of the woman! Again! Women can do anything. We can do stupid things and amazing things and smart things and dumb things. And we don't even need to get a permission slip!"
"You are such a kumbaya fucker," Elliot said. He took a drink. "I guess my problem is that she was always so hard, and that was our model, you know? Like, after Dad died, all we had was her, and she was this certain way. It's like a mama duck turning around and telling all her ducklings that they've been waddling the wrong fucking way, even though she taught them how to do it."
There was applause down the block—the parade had started. Aidan and Zachary cheered, and Elliot and Wendy each hoisted one child into the air. Nicky spun around to knock on the window at Shear Beauty to let his mother know. Porter and Juliette were craning their necks to see the floats begin their slow journey. It was like watching manatees race.
"Everyone makes mistakes, Porter," Astrid had said in the bathroom. "You don't have to be perfect. You don't even have to pretend to be perfect."
This was the job of a parent: to fuck up, over and over again. This was the job of a child: to grow up anyway.
If she hadn't learned anything else, she had learned this—say it. Say it now, while you have the chance.
She wasn't one of those people who needed to be stimulated all the time, with a smartphone and a TV screen and a podcast in her eardrum. She liked to be where she was.
This was how it was supposed to feel. It wasn't just that she belonged to someone else, it was that she belonged.
People said that everyone was born alone and everyone would die alone, but they were wrong. When someone was born, they brought so many people with them, generations of people zipped into the marrow of their tiny bones.
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Astrid looked at their reflections on the blank screen, at herself and her wife, and felt so, so happy.
"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 years 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 13-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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Google Books — Cargando...
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Part One: All Adults Here.
There are no giants in this book and no villains. Nothing will stand out as an ah-ha moment, and you won't be haunted because of shock value after reading it. There is an abundance of truth and openness about how the family is generationally dysfunctional in ways, perfect in others, closeted and open simultaneously, and just as crazy, unpredictable, and loyal as yours.
There is a lot of head nodding, mm-hmm moments where you will recognize yourself, your siblings, or even your parent in one or another character. You will see that what you thought was uniquely off about your own family isn't. And that what you thought was remarkably special to your relationship is also noteworthy in others.
In other words, All Adults Here will help you open your eyes to family, its imperfections, and its constraints. You will watch Cecilia be sent to live with her grandmother at age 13 because she did the right thing but was bullied because of it; it was easier on her parents to remove her than deal with it. You will see Astrid, the matriarch, find love in the arms of a woman after being a widow for decades. As the firstborn, Elliot will finally be able to express the pressures of the same. Porter, the unwed, pregnant by choice from a sperm bank, still having an affair with her high-school sweetheart middle child, sees she is loved by her mother and both her older and younger brothers. And Nicholas, oh, precious, last born, never at fault, Nickey shows his downfalls and fears just like his siblings.
Set in small town USA, the townspeople are just as nosy and awful and loving and loyal and plagued with turmoil as in any other town; we all hate to love where we are from and couldn't imagine wanting to be from anywhere else if we were being honest. You will fall in love with some of the ancillary characters, root for Robin to find herself, and hope that Sidney falls off the float.
That is All Adults Here. I love this book. It is a book about nothing and everything and is an important book to read if you belong to a family.
Part Two: Emma Straub.
What an insightful writer Ms. Straub is. She captures the tiniest of nuances in grand ways without making a spectacle. In one stroke she can paralyze you by seeing your deepest secrets and open your mind while allowing you to feel okay about all of it. She is a rare writer that requires you must read every. single. word. Because if you don't, you might have missed something. Scratch that; you will miss something.
Take your time, read every word, and think about it. Put it into the context of your own life and come out the other side knowing you are not alone with how upside down according to the perfection on social media your life is. You are okay.
Thank you, Emma Straub, for writing truth. (