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Modern Lovers Author Emma Straub on Brooklyn, Babies, and Why She Embraces the Beach Read Label

By Julia Felsenthal

“As a writer, I used to go to book clubs, and I don’t think I’ll ever do that again,” the novelist Emma Straub explains, laughing. She’s referring not to her own book club, a group of neighbors from her old block in Brooklyn’s Prospect Lefferts Gardens, but to her history of accepting invitations to guest star as a visiting author at the gatherings of strangers. “It’s terrible. You show up, they talk about your book for five minutes. Most of the time you’re sitting there eating crudité, listening to someone talk about her husband, and you’re like, ‘I don’t even know you!’ Then sometimes they insult you and your work, and you’re like, ‘Wait, but really: When is it okay for me to go home?’ ”

Straub, in person, is sunny and funny, with the fair-haired loveliness of a milkmaid in a Dutch Renaissance painting. She’s sitting across from me at a small table in a tiny café in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Cobble Hill, near where she and her husband recently bought a home. It’s exactly the type of establishment that might appear in Straub’s new novel, Modern Lovers , out next week. And we’re on the topic of book clubs because her latest book begins with one such get-together, and because, generally speaking, Straub writes the kind of fast-paced, psychologically astute fiction that’s exceedingly book club–friendly.

Modern Lovers is no exception. It tells the story of one summer in the lives of two families living in the leafy outer Brooklyn neighborhood of Ditmas Park. Elizabeth, a musician turned real estate agent, and Andrew, a trust-funded dilettante, are college sweethearts and the parents of a quiet, well-adjusted teenage son, Harry. Down the block live Zoe and Jane, proprietors of a local farm-to-table restaurant and mothers of the preternaturally cool, academically indifferent Ruby, who is also secretly the object of Harry’s burning lust.

The couples are linked by more than just geographical proximity and adolescent hormones: As undergraduates at Oberlin, Elizabeth, Andrew, and Zoe, along with another friend, Lydia, formed a band, and together wrote a punk feminist anthem called “Mistress of Myself.” Lydia went on to become a grunge goddess in the mold of Courtney Love, and, as a solo act, she turned their song into a massive hit, its popularity buoyed by her tragic death at 27 from a heroin overdose. Decades later, a pushy Hollywood producer wants the rights to “Mistress of Myself” for a biopic about Lydia’s life. As Elizabeth, Andrew, and Zoe each confront the implications of granting their permission, the fault lines in their relationships begin to appear, and long-buried secrets start to emerge.

By Beatrice Zocchi

By Elise Taylor

By Juan A. Ramírez

Modern Lovers explores the compromises we make in marriage and parenthood, and that age-old question of what happens to a dream deferred. It’s also, as _Vogue’_s Megan O’Grady wrote , very much about “the Brooklyn mise-en-scène,” a particular sliver of exurban bourgeois bohemia that by now ought to be familiar even to readers with no actual connection to this city.

It’s a setting that Straub, a native New Yorker born and raised on the Upper West Side, assiduously avoided in her first two novels: 2014’s The Vacationers was about contemporary New Yorkers, but it was set on holiday in Mallorca; 2012’s Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures was a period piece that went from rural Wisconsin to golden-age Hollywood. Straub says she wrote a New York City novel only at her editor’s insistence, after reluctantly agreeing to postpone the book she really wanted to write: “about a family of cheesemakers in the Hudson Valley.” (That one, she assures me, is on deck.) But once she put aside her reservations and started Modern Lovers , “then,” she says, “I had so much fun.”

Chatting with the author, I realized that it’s precisely that sense of fun that distinguishes her from the hordes of other talented writers currently on the fiction scene. Straub’s books are by all accounts literary, but they aren’t tortured by an overly self-conscious, nebulous sense of literary-ness. “You want to take my book to the beach?” she jokes. “Take my book to the beach! Please. Tell all your friends to take my book to the beach.”

If you’re smart, by the way, you’ll do just that. I chatted with Straub about living in New York, writing while parenting (she has two kids under 3), and how she came to make what is perhaps the most Brooklyn garment of all time: a jumpsuit printed with the Leah Goren illustration that adorns the Modern Lovers book jacket.

Emma Straub

Tell me a little about where this book came from. We were living in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, on the loveliest block, with the loveliest neighbors. Our next-door neighbor was a guy who was in his late 50s when we moved in. He had a normal job, but he was also a drummer in a band. It just seemed like such a cool thing for a truly adult human to do.

He made me start thinking about people who were out of that postcollege, anything-is-possible zone. For years I tried to write a short story about the teenage son of a couple in a band in a neighborhood like mine. It never went anywhere. One day I realized if I took a step back, it wasn’t really about the band; it was about a couple, their son, their neighborhood. If I took several steps back, it could be a whole book.

You’ve spoken in the past about not wanting to write a book starring people like you in a place like where you live. Up until the moment I started, I didn’t want to do it.

What changed? I talked myself into having fun with it by putting it in a part of Brooklyn that doesn’t feel like the Brooklyn in our collective imaginations. There are no brownstones in this book.

There’s one brownstone apartment . . . That they visit! But they don’t live there. Having the book be about real estate made it fun, too. Real estate is, of course, a shared obsession in New York. It also seemed like a useful way to have these characters think about the choices they’ve made. Elizabeth, the real estate agent, her job is to help people imagine themselves in new spaces. Meanwhile, in her own life, that’s exactly what she hasn’t done. She did what a lot of women do: concentrated on raising her child, on her husband’s happiness. She let her passions evaporate for practical purposes.

Let’s talk about “Mistress of Myself.” It’s such a great name. I almost called the book Mistress of Myself , but then I was like, “That sounds like an Eva Longoria television show.”

I am not a songwriter. I have never written a song, nor can I sing or play an instrument. But I am proud of my pseudo-punk anthem.

In your own life, do you have any similar claim to fame? When I was 22 or 23, a friend of mine was working for Noah Baumbach as his assistant. They were filming The Squid and the Whale . She was like, “Will you come be an extra? It takes place in the ’80s and I know you have the clothes.”

It was not so much a compliment. But of course I went, and I’m in one scene. It takes place in Ditmas Park, or in Prospect Park South, actually. That’s where Noah Baumbach’s father lived until recently, which I know because when we were looking for houses, my husband and I looked at one which was supercool. We got up to the office, and it had Jonathan Baumbach books everywhere. I was like, “Wait a second!”

In the last few years you’ve written two novels, and had two children. Was that the plan? Well, before you have a baby, you get approximately 10 months’ notice. That’s something you learn when you’re pregnant: It’s a solid 10 months. In 2012, I got pregnant, and I was like, “Okay, now I know exactly how much time I have to get this book done.” So I did. This was The Vacationers . There is no ticking clock like your own body.

You had a baby four months ago. Was Modern Lovers also a pregnancy book? I had written approximately none of it. I saw the deadline looming, and I got it done. I’ve always been good about doing things on time and being a diligent worker. But once I had my first son, I understood that I needed to redouble my efforts. There’s no way one can waste time at all.

Your father, Peter Straub, is a well-known and prolific writer of horror fiction. Do you think you write so quickly because you grew up watching him do it? My dad thinks it’s funny when I describe him as prolific and quick because sometimes it’s taken him several years to write a book. But he’s in his early 70s and he’s written about 20 novels.

Do you aspire to that? For sure! That’s my goal. I really want this to be my job. I’ve taught, but I don’t think I’m terribly gifted at it. I’m good at this. It’s hard now, certainly, that I have two babies. But I also like to work, and I like to have new projects and ideas.

Speaking of which, I saw a very cool jumpsuit made from your book jacket on Instagram. Oh, my God. My publisher is making these clutches with the illustrations from my book jacket. I’d heard of Print All Over Me . After they sent me the image of what they were going to do, I realized I could make myself clothes to match. I just couldn’t resist. I had a jumpsuit made, and this caftan dress, and a T-shirt for my husband, and one for my 2 1/2-year-old. They don’t make onesies, but luckily my husband is a graphic designer and handy in this regard, so he’s in charge of making a onesie for the baby.

Your books tend to get published in the summer and billed as beach reads. Did growing up with a dad who writes genre fiction allow you to separate “writing” from the somewhat meaningless notion of “being literary”? This is something I talk to my dad about a lot. He writes books that are very dark, and early in his career, there were ghosts. But for the last 20 to 25 years, his books have been very dark but completely literary. It’s the way people perceive the idea of the subject matter.

And also the way they’re marketed. He has all sorts of feelings about that—mostly because his books are really good, and people might assume the reverse because they’re published under the umbrella of a certain genre.

But for me—this is happy-go-lucky Emma—I don’t care. I have some friends who are published in a way that they feel is limiting. Because of the way their jackets look or the way they’re marketed, their books don’t look as smart and funny as they are. I’m not in that position. I’m glad I’m not put in the chick-lit ghetto. But I’m totally happy for someone to describe my book as a beach read. It’s a funny murky zone.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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First Look: Inside Emma Straub’s New Brooklyn Bookstore

The "Modern Lovers" author decided to open Books Are Magic after her beloved neighborhood bookstore closed.

Published Apr 29, 2017 7:30 AM

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Walk into the just opened Books Are Magic in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens—which soft launches today in honor of Independent Bookstore Day and will officially welcome visitors on Monday—and you might not find flying carpets (yet…) but there is a feeling that a little pixie dust has been sprinkled everywhere.

( Modern Lovers , The Vacationers ) and her husband Michael, a graphic designer, only signed the lease for the former clothing store in February and came up with the whole idea to start a bookshop just six months ago, when their neighborhood’s beloved Book Court closed after 35 years of being in business. “People were heartbroken—I was heartbroken!” says Straub. “We needed to offer people a rope to hold onto.”

With two months to pull everything together, the couple set to work on the easiest task. “We worked for the Magnetic Fields for 10 years. I was Stephin Merritt’s assistant forever, and we would make and sell their merch on the road—that’s our comfort zone. It felt less intimidating to begin there.”

With a series of midnight blue mugs, enamel pins, stickers, and pens proving that the project was reassuringly real, Emma and Michael then turned to ordering books—10,000 to be precise—which will line the same wooden shelves sourced from Book Court.

Restaurateur and designer Matthew Maddy (a college friend of Straub’s) oversaw the build-out, adding extra streamlined shelf space where needed and scoring giant sheets of dead stock Formica in the perfect shade of dusty blush to use as partitions (the walls are painted Peach Kiss by Benjamin Moore ).

On a tour of the shop, Straub points out some of her other favorite features: A deconstructed chandelier hanging above the kids’ area in the back with neon pink and orange wires she dubs “the octopus”—as well as papier mâché mobiles of Alice in Wonderland, James and the Giant Peach, and Harry Potter planned to be strung up in the coming weeks.

She promptly crawls into an octagonal reading nook built into a corner, explaining, “Whenever I have a phone interview, I sit in here.” (Conference cubbies: genius!) In the front, long rolling tables from Ikea will make space for events (39 are already planned for the summer, starting May 9th).

The pièce de resistance? A sink-in-and-never-get-up tufted leather couch, which comes straight from Straub’s dad’s office. It’s the same spot she used to sit on and read while growing up. The magic lives on.

Emma’s current top five reads:

Read more: 10 Books for Mothers and Daughters to Share Books To Read In Honor of International Women’s Day The Best Books to Buy for Their Covers

Photos by  Max Touhey Published on April 29, 2017

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Author Interviews

Novelist emma straub asks life's big questions in 'this time tomorrow'.

Tonya Mosley

Straub's new novel is a time-travel fantasy about a 40-year-old woman who's tending to her ailing father — until, that is, the day she's transported to her childhood home on her 16th birthday.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest, Emma Straub, has written a new novel called "This Time Tomorrow." It's on the list of books our book critic Maureen Corrigan recommends reading this summer. Maureen described it as a time-travel fantasy imbued with Straub's signature awareness of the infinite ways we humans make life harder for ourselves. Straub's other books include "All Adults Here," "The Vacationers" and "Modern Lovers." She's also co-owner of the Brooklyn independent bookstore Books Are Magic. She spoke with FRESH AIR's guest interviewer Tonya Mosley.

TONYA MOSLEY, BYLINE: Who hasn't in some way looked at life and wondered, what would it be like to go back in time, to make different choices, maybe relive a chapter that set the path forward to where you are now? Emma Straub explores the possibility in her new novel called "This Time Tomorrow." It's about a woman named Alice who is living a quaint life in New York City, working as an admissions officer at the same private high school she graduated from while tending to her ailing father. The morning after Alice's 40th birthday, she wakes up to find herself back in the year 1996, reliving her 16th birthday, and she gets a chance to answer a question that many of us wish we could. Is there anything in the past that we would change given the chance?

Emma Straub, welcome to FRESH AIR.

EMMA STRAUB: Thank you so much for having me.

MOSLEY: I was hoping that you'd start with a reading - the moment that your main character, Alice, wakes up after a night of drinking on her 40th birthday and finds herself in her childhood home on the morning of her 16th birthday. Can you set up that scene?

STRAUB: Sure. So Alice has been with her father in the hospital. He's very sick, dying. And she's quite used to seeing him that way, as so many of us have - seen our loved ones hooked up to too many machines in a sterile, cold room. And as you say, she has gone out celebrating and found herself the next morning in her childhood bedroom. And she's just come out to see her dad - healthy, vibrant, in his 40s - sitting at the kitchen table.

(Reading) Leonard Stern was sitting at a spot at the kitchen table. There was a cup of coffee next to him and an open can of Coca-Cola. Next to his drinks, Leonard had a plate with some toast and a few hard-boiled eggs. Alice thought she could see an Oreo, too. The clock on the wall behind the table said that it was 7 in the morning. Leonard looked good. He looked healthy - healthier, actually, than Alice could ever remember him looking. He looked like he could run around the block if he wanted to just for fun, like the kind of dad who could play catch and teaches kid how to ice-skate, even though he absolutely wasn't.

Leonard looked like a movie star, like a movie-star version of himself - handsome, young and quick. Even his hair looked bouncy, its waves full and the deep, rich brown they'd been in her childhood. When had his hair started to gray? Alice didn't know. Leonard looked up and made eye contact with her. He turned to look at the clock, turned back to Alice and shook his head. You are up early, though - a new leaf. I like it. What was happening?

MOSLEY: What a scenario to wake up to - and to see a parent young again. Thinking about that moment when Alice travels back in time - her 16-year-old self wakes up. She hears her dad in the kitchen, and she sees her father for the first time when he was younger. Take me to that moment. I mean, I think it is one that if we put ourselves in that position and think about the person that we love, a parent that we love - what were the most important questions she had or new insights that she walked away with seeing her father sitting there in that moment?

STRAUB: You know, I think that all of us - if we close our eyes, we can picture the places we grew up, the house we grew up in. And we can hear those noises - the familiar noises, the ones that are so mundane, so quotidian, you know, that you would never even think to write it down, you know? - the sound of someone brushing their teeth or the sound of the toilet flushing or the sound of someone making coffee in the morning. But Alice - when she walks into that room, all of a sudden, you know, those things are like a symphony. I mean, it's - because she knows how fleeting it is and that in her current life, in the present day, she's never going to hear those things again. And so to be able to hear them again is just a beautiful, meaningful experience.

MOSLEY: Your book comes at a time when the world is really into stories about the multiverse and time travel. Why do you think that is?

STRAUB: Well, I - you know, I don't - I can't speak to, you know, like, the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse. That sort of thing is above my pay grade. But what I do know is that I am one of several writers I know who are mothers of small children who have written time travels during the pandemic. And I think it's because the past few years have been so wildly unsettling for all of us that some of us, who happened to be novelists, started looking for a way out or an explanation or some comfort. I certainly know that thinking about this book and writing this book and experience - the experience of writing it felt to me like true time travel and just a much, much-needed escape.

MOSLEY: You know, this book is not a memoir, but you make that very clear that it is the closest that you've come to an autobiographical work. And Alice, the main character in the book, is close to her father, who is a writer. And in real life, you're close to your father, Peter Straub, who is also a well-known author. And like your main character, Alice, you were by your father's side as well during this pandemic as he battled sickness. What was it about this moment that made you want to write about something that's so close to your real life when it comes to time travel?

STRAUB: Yeah. You know, it's something that I have never done before. You know, there are always, you know, little shards of me, little sprinklings of me and sort of my actual life throughout all my books. But I had never turned to fiction in quite this way. And really what made me know that it was all right was because it was something that I had seen my father do. My dad has written a lot of books and a lot of very scary books.

MOSLEY: Right. As a horror writer. Yes.

STRAUB: Yes. And I saw that that one of the things he was always able to do in his books was to use things that had been really difficult for him in his life, particularly like, you know, traumatic things that had happened to him in his childhood, as a certain kind of fuel maybe for some of his work or to use writing as a certain kind of processing tool - you know, not writing as therapy - nothing like that. But just, you know, writing is such a powerful way of getting inside your feelings, at least for me, in a way that I don't really have access to in another way.

I've always used writing as a way to further understand myself and other people. And writing about characters that were going through something like what my father and I were going through - it felt so good to me to let the art do its work, you know? Like, it's - I mean, it is a novel that I think that anyone who has had a loved one - a sick loved - or who has been through a death of a parent - people will be able to see, I hope, you know, their own experience and to get into those feelings because I was feeling it so deeply when I was writing.

MOSLEY: Your father was hospitalized for quite some time in August of 2020 with a heart condition. How is he right now?

STRAUB: He's all right. He's sending me text messages about all my - all his thoughts about my book tour and my book. He's reading it again for, I think, the fourth or fifth time. He's terrific. He's terrific. He is.

MOSLEY: I'm interested to know, as someone deeply invested in interrogating relationships in all of your books, was there ever a time maybe when you were younger - you mentioned your dad has already read this book four times - was there ever a time when you rejected his critiques?

STRAUB: No. No. You know, it's - I really - I can't overstate how lucky I am to have the dad I do, especially as a writer, because I think that he always understood what it was I wanted to do and never doubted me for a moment. And, you know, I think, often writers' parents, you know, suggest other things, like maybe law school (laughter) or I don't know - something that might have some guarantee.

MOSLEY: As we mentioned, the character in the book Leonard is sick and he's hospitalized, and his daughter Alice visits him daily. You had to do that in real life. How did the process of writing this book help you in processing your father's aging and his mortality?

STRAUB: Well, shoutout to my therapist. You know, so my therapist and I have talked about this a lot. And she uses the term pre-grieving. And I think that - I think it's something that so many of us have to do, you know, when our loved ones are ill over a long, long, long period of time. You know, I think I used to think about death as quite a simple thing - you know, something that happened in one moment and before it, you know, that you couldn't prepare and that afterwards was after, and that's when the grieving began. But I know that's not the case and - because I know how much time the loved ones really have to sit with the inevitability of their loved one's death. And I certainly did that with my dad while I was working on "This Time Tomorrow."

MOSLEY: If you're just joining us, my guest is Emma Straub, author of the new book "This Time Tomorrow." She and her husband own Books Are Magic in Brooklyn, N.Y. More after this break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BEASTIE BOYS' "GROOVE HOLMES")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. And we're talking with author Emma Straub about her new book "This Time Tomorrow." Straub is the author of four novels, which have been published in more than 20 languages. And Emma and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Your main character Alice is sitting with her own life choices. She's turning 40. She works in the admissions office of the high school she graduated from. Her job is a daily reminder of her life choices. There's this line in the book where you write, sometimes Alice felt like everyone she knew had already become whatever they were going to become, and she was still waiting. And I was struck by that because I was also wondering if you think this is kind of a phenomenon of middle age, where we're sitting with our place in the moment that we're in.

STRAUB: Yes, I do. I do - very much so. I mean, I am now 42. Although because I turned 40 in April of 2020, I haven't fully accepted that yet. And so I think I'm just going to keep turning 40...

MOSLEY: Yeah.

STRAUB: ...Until I feel like we've really moved into the next phase. But in any case, yeah, I think that so many people in my generation feel that way, that, you know, we've been waiting for some sort of flag to come down that says, oh, yes. Now you are entering this phase of your life - because I think when you're a child, you look at your parents who have made whatever decisions they've made about, you know, where to live, what jobs to have, what, you know, school you go to - all of those, like, big, major life choices. And then, you look around and you realize that it's your turn to make these really - to build these enormous blocks of your life and that you're no longer in the sort of preliminary stage. And I think it's really easy to look at your choices in your 20s and say, oh, this doesn't really - you know, I'm just doing this for now, whatever it is. But, of course, each choice we make leads to another opportunity and another opportunity and another opportunity. And so I definitely feel like, you know, my early 40-something cohort is definitely looking around, especially right now in the world that we live in, saying, like, wait a minute, I didn't sign this form, you know...

STRAUB: ...Agreeing to have this be my full adulthood.

MOSLEY: Yeah. One of the other things your character, Alice, is most surprised by at this stage of middle age is when she time travels to the 90s, she sees just how young and vibrant her father really was back then. And I think we've all had experiences like that, maybe looking at old videos or photos and thinking, I really thought my mom and dad were old back then, but they were so young. And I'm just wondering, in writing this book, did you in any way come to this realization about yourself?

STRAUB: Yeah. I mean, I - you know, I have been having this experience, in writing this book and thinking about this book, that, you know, I feel like I'm reminding myself, you know, that I am still young and that I will never be this young ever again.

MOSLEY: (Laughter).

STRAUB: And, yes, like, do my knees make crinkly noises when I walk up stairs? They do. They definitely do. But I do take comfort from the fact that, like, (laughter) I have written this novel that, really, is a reminder to appreciate everything. I mean, the other night at my book launch for "This Time Tomorrow," I was sitting off to the side while my friend, Stephin Merritt, sang a couple of songs. And I was watching my two children and my husband and my parents in the front row. And I was so aware that that might never happen again, you know, that I might never - who knows when I will publish my next book? Who knows how everyone's health will be? Who knows who will be here, you know? I just - I was so moved just staring at my family and thinking, like, this is right now. This is right now. I have all of this right now. And, I mean, you can't ask for more than that.

MOSLEY: Do you think that writing this book, in a way, was the gift of being able to see that? Because I do think that maybe a limitation of the human experience is that we are always thinking about the future or the past. We're never really squarely in the present. People do things to allow themselves to be there. There are devices. But those moments where you can truly sit in the now, in the present, it's kind of a hard thing for us to do.

STRAUB: Yeah. Oh, it's impossible, you know? I know - I have some friends who are poets and who are good at meditating. And - (laughter)...

MOSLEY: Yep. Yeah.

STRAUB: ...You know, practice gratitude in a more active way. And I just - you know, I am an anxious person. And I am always in motion. And, yeah, those moments are really rare. And, you know, my hope is that when people read this book that that's the feeling they will have or want. And then they maybe pick up the phone and call someone who they've loved for a long time and just say, hello.

GROSS: We're listening to the conversation our guest interviewer Tonya Mosley recorded with novelist Emma Straub. Straub's new book is called "This Time Tomorrow." We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. And Justin Chang will review the new film "Top Gun: Maverick." Here's Stephin Merritt and his band the Magnetic Fields with his song "Book Of Love." I'm Terry Gross. And this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BOOK OF LOVE")

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS: (Singing) The book of love is long and boring. No one can lift the damn thing. It's full of charts and facts and figures and instructions for dancing. But I, I love it when you read to me. And you, you can read me anything. The book of love has music in it - in fact, that's where music comes from. Some of it is just transcendental. Some of it is just really dumb. But I...

(SOUNDBITE OF BOB WILBER AND KENNY DAVERN'S "ROSETTA")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to our interview with Emma Straub. Her new novel "This Time Tomorrow" is one of our book critic Maureen Corrigan's recommendations for summer reading. Straub's other books include "The Vacationers," "Modern Lovers" and "All Adults Here." She's also co-owner of the Brooklyn independent bookstore Books Are Magic.

"This Time Tomorrow" is a time-travel fantasy. The main character, Alice, is turning 40. She's been spending a lot of time with her father at the hospital, where he's been ill with a heart condition. She's also been wondering if she's living the right life. After a night of drinking too much, she wakes up and finds herself back in 1996, on the day of her 16th birthday. Her father is younger - in his 40s - and healthy.

The book is partially inspired by Emma Straub's experiences visiting her father, horror writer Peter Straub, during the months he was in the hospital. Emma Straub spoke with FRESH AIR guest interviewer Tonya Mosley.

MOSLEY: You describe books for your family not as accessories but appendages. And I thought that description was really interesting. They were attached to you. How so?

STRAUB: Yeah. Well, my dad - I mean, so my dad, to this day - my parents moved from the Upper West Side about six years ago and now live about five blocks away from us in Brooklyn. And even so, when my parents come over to our house, my dad always brings a book with him, just in case.

MOSLEY: Just in case he has a free moment.

STRAUB: As if my two children would ever leave him alone - you know, not a chance. But, yeah, I mean, he was always like that. Both of my parents just read all the time. And books were a vital - a vital - part of our home life. And, I mean, there were - you know, there are bookshelves in every room, stacks of books on the floor in every room. And, yeah, I mean, I - there's no memory of anything that I ever did with my family without books. When I think about, like, childhood vacations - like going to Disney World, that sort of thing - what I really remember is, like, sitting next to the pool with my dad reading books.

MOSLEY: Really? At Disneyland?

STRAUB: Yeah.

MOSLEY: Everyone else is in the pool, and you and your dad are on the side reading a book.

STRAUB: Well, we'd take breaks. You know, we'd take breaks - go splash around. But, yeah, then back to the Lois Duncan, back to the Christopher Pike. You know, I had priorities.

MOSLEY: Yeah. You mentioned earlier that, you know, writing this book allowed you a little bit of space during the pandemic, just mental space to focus on the possibilities of a future and just to escape that cloistered feeling that we all were feeling during that time. It also took you just a year to write this book. Was that a record for you?

STRAUB: You know, books take different periods of time to write, certainly. But what I can say about "This Time Tomorrow" is that it really felt - it was the most immersive writing experience of my life. It absolutely just came out of me. And I don't mean in some, like, you know, taking dictation from above sort of way, but just that I was so happy to work. I was so happy to be able to have time to write again after six months with zero child care that I just - I took such profound pleasure in the work that I was devoted to task in a way that felt new and unusual.

MOSLEY: You know, Emma, in a way, your life feels like a novel. You're a daughter of writers and literature lovers in New York. You become a bestselling author. You open up a bookstore. You said earlier you kind of jumped. You said, you know, I graduated from college, and then I started publishing. But there was some stuff in between that, right? And that includes rejection.

STRAUB: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, I have so many rejection letters. I could go toe to toe with really just about anyone in terms of the number of rejection letters that I racked up. I started writing novels. Really, it was, like, the moment I graduated from college, I declared myself a novelist, and I started writing books. And it was great practice. The books were terrible. But I am so grateful that none of them got published (laughter).

MOSLEY: Really, looking back, you can see that. You're happy about that, yeah.

STRAUB: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, I did - I got rejection letters. Two of my favorite rejection letters were from the two editors who I have worked with at - as an adult. They wrote me beautiful rejection letters and said quite clearly that I wasn't ready, and I wasn't. They were right. You know, my editors, I have to say, are usually right.

MOSLEY: What did those lovely rejection letters say?

STRAUB: Oh, there was one that was great that was - it was for a novel about a murderous poet. And the woman who is my editor now said that she loved the poems.

MOSLEY: You got what she was saying. Yeah.

MOSLEY: You know, one of the things that I was most captivated by in this book was this ability to be able to go to a time that I remembered very well, the '90s - we were about the same age - back to a world before emails and social media. What was that like for you to be able to situate yourself as a writer in that space and excavate?

STRAUB: It was just heaven. It was just heaven. I mean, when I tell you that writing this book made me want to throw my telephone into the river (laughter) - I just - you know, we - I think we forget because things happen so gradually. You know, sure, when - like, I had I think - I had a computer when I was in high school. I had AOL Messenger. But it happened so gradually that, you know, OK, email, OK, computers, OK, cellphones, OK, iPhones - you know, the creep of technology into every moment of our lives, you know, it's insidious. And it was - it did make me feel like I could breathe a little deeper to write about 1996 and to remember what it felt like.

I think all of us who are of a certain age remember that freedom, especially as a teenager, of walking out of the house, you know, you've made a plan with your friend. You're going to meet them on the corner of 86th and Broadway or wherever it is. And you're going to go and stand there. And you're going to wait for them to show up. And you're going to do whatever it is. You're going to twiddle your thumbs. You're going to smoke a cigarette. You're going to write a poem in your notebook. But you're not going to scroll through other people's lives for 30 minutes, you know? You're not going to have some sort of FOMO (laughter) moment. You're just going to be right there. And I think that, that is something that we are all missing so much right now, you know? I feel surgically attached to my telephone, you know, in ways that I think are good, you know? Like, especially, like, on my book tour now, if I get a text from my husband with a picture of our children in real time eating breakfast or whatever, that is wonderful. And I love that. I love that immediacy. But I don't like getting, you know, sucked up into the swirl of social media, when all of a sudden you think, oh, my God, I've lost an hour doing what?

MOSLEY: You have a pretty big presence on social media, though. So many of your fans connect with you there. We see so much of your life.

STRAUB: Yeah. I know. That's the rub for me because, I think, I certainly have some writer friends who - some friends, period, not all of them are writers - who saw from a mile away how dangerous and toxic and time-sucking it could be and just declined to participate. But I am an extrovert and an extremely social person. And I do - I love it. I love it. You know, I've always really enjoyed the ability to be more connected to people who I don't see in my everyday life through social media. And so, yeah, for me, it's hard. I think, maybe, I need one of those accounts that, like, you know, the teenagers have where, like, nobody knows it's me (laughter).

MOSLEY: Yeah, really. Right? Yeah. How do you cope with being an extrovert? I mean, reading and writing is such a solitary activity, at least it feels like it. There seems to be a juxtaposition between your internal self and then your need to be external.

STRAUB: Yeah, that's why it's really good that I have a bookstore. It's so healthy (laughter).

MOSLEY: That feeds it for you? Yeah.

STRAUB: Well, yeah, because, I mean, not only, you know, do I have, like, a brilliant, funny staff of people who I can always talk to about anything, whether it's books or movies or pizza or TikTok or, you know, whatever. But also, you know, we're open to the public, so people just come in. People just come in. And because I live in the neighborhood where the bookstore is and it's the neighborhood that I went to school in, my children go to school in, I really know everybody. It drives my husband absolutely crazy when we walk from our kids' school to the bookstore because it takes me about three times as long as it takes him because I stop and talk to so many people.

(SOUNDBITE OF PAQUITO D'RIVERA'S "CONTRADANZA")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. And we're talking with author Emma Straub about her new book, "This Time Tomorrow." Straub is the author of four novels, which have been published in more than 20 languages. And Emma and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y.

New York is such a present character in so many of your novels and, of course, in this one. Have you ever thought about or is there a desire to think about other locales and other places as you continue your journey as a writer and a novelist?

STRAUB: Yeah, of course. Of course. You know, I think that, if anything, I've always been wary of writing New York City just because so many people have and so many people do. And, you know, there is that sort of voice that says, like, does the world need another novel set in New York City? But with this book in particular, there was no way to separate the story from the place, you know? New York City was so much a part of the way I thought about the novel and what the novel meant to me. And I think that, you know, even though - you know, I'm a New York City kid. And so if you happen to be a New Yorker, there will be things that resonate with you. My hope is that by being as specific as I possibly can be with all of these places from my youth that the reader finds themself in the places of their youth, you know? It doesn't - yes. So the diner - my diner, 3 Star on the corner of 86th and Columbus, a truly disgusting hole in the wall that I loved with all my being - that was where I went and ate French fries at 2 o'clock in the morning with my friends. And maybe for someone else, it was a Friendly's or a Denny's or something else entirely.

MOSLEY: If you could actually go back to your 16-year-old self, what would you tell her?

STRAUB: I would tell her to quit smoking (laughter).

MOSLEY: Do you still smoke?

STRAUB: No, no, no. I was a very good smoker, but I quit in my early 20s. But what else? I don't know. I mean, you know, I think I would tell her - if I could go back to my 16-year-old self, I would ask more questions. I would feel less self-conscious. I think that teenagers, teenage girls in particular, waste, like - I don't know - probably 75% of their brain cells feeling self-conscious. At least I did. I just think there was room for a lot more in there, other feelings and other conversations. And, yeah, I mean, I would say hang out with my parents more. But the truth is I hung out with them all the time (laughter).

MOSLEY: You spent so much time with your dad in the hospital. I thought it was really interesting that you said you all would talk about writing.

STRAUB: We'd talk about what we are working on. We'd talk about things that we have written. You know, what was really unique in our relationship about the time that we had when he was in the hospital - he was there for four months. And, you know, nowadays when I am with my parents, I am often also with my children, which means that there's no sort of sustained adult conversation allowed. It means that every conversation is likely to be interrupted with questions about snacks or video games or, you know, anything. And so my dad and I were able to talk or not talk or just sort of be together for hours with no one else in the room.

MOSLEY: That slowed-down time - it sounds like such a gift but also such a scary moment. Was there ever a time when you were writing this book, processing all of this and afraid that he wasn't going to make it?

STRAUB: Oh, 100%, yes. And he certainly thought so, too. I am so glad that he is still here, you know, just because I get to spend more time with him, mostly - that's No. 1 - and that my children get to spend more time with him but also that I got to give him this thing and say, here; look; I made you this; I think you'll like it, and then he does.

MOSLEY: Emma Straub, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for this book.

STRAUB: Thank you so much for talking to me. I so appreciate it. It's an absolute thrill.

GROSS: Emma Straub's new novel is called "This Time Tomorrow." She spoke with guest interviewer Tonya Mosley. Tonya hosts the podcast Truth Be Told. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews "Top Gun: Maverick" with Tom Cruise and the role he originated 36 years ago. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF JASON MORAN'S "BIG STUFF")

Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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‘it feels like sometimes you’re living on mars’.

Author Emma Straub tells Jennifer Lipman about the challenges of writing contemporary fiction in a pandemic and in Trump's America

BY Jennifer Lipman

Emma Straub should have spent the past few months on a book tour, with stops around her native United States and in the UK. As a mother of two, who combines a successful career as a fiction writer with running a Brooklyn bookstore alongside her husband, frankly she was ready for the peace and quiet.

“I cannot tell you how much I was looking forward to it; so many hotel rooms alone,” she laughs wryly. Instead, with schools closed, she has been eking out time for Zoom book launches between full-time parenting of her “very energetic and loud” four- and six-year-old, who are “always naked and always attacking each other”. Meanwhile her husband has been overseeing a fledgling e-commerce business to save their bookstore.

In some ways, it’s fitting she is spending so much time considering parenting; the new book, All Adults Here , is all about the complicated dynamics of the modern American family. Characters include Astrid, a widow in a picturesque Hudson Valley town, concealing an unexpected romance from her adult offspring — all of whom have messy personal lives themselves — and her granddaughter Cecilia, on the cusp on teenagehood and wondering where she fits into the world.

It’s familiar territory for Straub, who has made a name for herself with character-driven tales of parents, children and relationships. Her bestsellers include The Vacationers (a fraught family holiday in Europe) and Modern Lovers (hipster ex-college friends deal with impending middle age). Her writing is lightly comic but touches on serious issues too; All Adults Here , for example, includes a trans teenager facing hostility from peers.

“I’ve written lots of characters who have identities different than mine, whether sexuality, gender or race, and I’ve always felt fine about it, because it’s the job of a fiction writer to imagine worlds that have different kinds of people in,” she says, explaining the extensive research she did to develop the character. “But I was nervous writing a trans character — for anyone from a marginalised group but especially trans kids, I don’t want to do a disservice.”

Straub enjoys writing from the perspective of teenagers, perhaps because she —unusually — loved being a teenager. “I hated it in equal measure, of course, but it was such an intense period of self-discovery.”

The daughter of horror writer and Stephen King collaborator Peter Straub, she grew up in Manhattan. With an atheist Jewish mother and an agnostic Christian father, she identified as Jewish but the family never celebrated any religious holidays.

She attended an Episcopalian school, spending formative years in a cathedral. “It had nothing to do with me certainly, or with my family,” she recalls. “There were other students who would come with their parents for services, and that was all just a total mystery to me.”

Exposure to Jewish customs has come more recently, thanks to her younger son attending a synagogue pre-school for the past two years.

“It’s been really nice because the things I learned at my Episcopalian school that I have retained have nothing to do with religion but they have to do with stories and characters,” she says. “That’s what he’s gotten there — he’ll come home from school and say girls are dressed up as Queen Esther. It’s great. He has learned more about Judaism in pre-school than I ever did and it’s really nice to have that in my life.”

Straub’s debut, L aura Lamont’s Life in Pictures , depicted an actress in Golden Age Hollywood, navigating the studio system and the fickle nature of fame. The heroine marries a Jewish studio boss — as Straub says, many were Jewish —much to her midwestern mother’s disapproval, with antisemitism clearly pointed to as the reason. Straub used to see such discrimination as something “that happened hundreds of years ago, millennia ago… ancient history” but the older she gets “the more I understand how short time is and how short generations are”.

Published in 2012, it was her only foray into historical fiction. But writing about modern life poses a challenge today; how to do so when you don’t know how the defining story of your time is going to end (not that, she admits, she is getting much writing done with her children at home anyway).

“My novelist friends and I are talking about what a weird time it is to be a novelist because we have to make choices about what we’re writing next. Are you going to write something set in 2025, what is the world going to look like?” she says. “I am not brave enough to guess. Historical novelists win at the moment.”

All Adults Here is not a political novel and is about America generally, rather than Trump’s America, although Straub suggests that it may be “slightly misandrist, because that’s how I was feeling when I was writing it, that men are the problem”. Unsurprisingly, she is no fan of the current occupant of the White House, but neither is she confident he will be out by November.

“I was so optimistic in 2016, I was sure that [Clinton] was going to win,” she sighs. Biden “is fine”. “He’s not the most thrilling but he’s a sane and an empathetic person. That’ll do.” She’s more concerned about fairness; whether people are prevented from voting by post, say. “It is appalling how many people find it really hard to vote because Republicans have rigged it.”

We discuss the recent TV adaptation of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America ; at times, Straub says she feels “a bit like we’re living inside that, where the people who are running the country are so terrible and so wilfully ignorant to basic facts, that it feels like sometimes you’re just living on Mars”. When it comes to the pandemic “so many people are working off totally different sets of basic facts”.

Although New York remains partly in lockdown, the bookstore has now reopened, meaning she and her husband can share parenting duties again and at some stage she can return to her next novel.

Book sales are doing well because people “are in need of things to do and places to go without leaving your house” explains Straub. “TV is fine but you can’t do it all day long.”

And, she adds, “to my money books have always been the best and cheapest form of transportation”. That’s true — whether your destination is a family lunch in the Hudson Valley, a holiday villa in Europe, or 1950s California.

All Adults Here, Emma Straub, Penguin, £14.99, out now

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The author and owner of Brooklyn bookstore Books Are Magic discusses her latest work.

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For many young and hip Brooklyn residents eager to ditch the city for greener grass, the Hudson Valley is often their calling card. But Cobble Hill resident, author, and book store owner Emma Straub got out the city the way she knows best — through story.

The author’s latest novel, “All Adults Here,” is set outside of Rhinebeck, in the idyllic upstate town of Clapham. She was inspired by the family dynamics and small-town charm of Stars Hollow, the setting in “Gilmore Girls.” Clapham comes complete with a central gazebo and active sidewalk culture.

“I needed it to feel beautiful,” says Straub. “I wanted green grass and rolling roads, all that stuff.”

Straub started off writing about cheese — one of the book’s characters runs a goat cheese farm — and the story morphed into a multigenerational exploration of what it means to be an adult and part of a family. “Families expose your best and worst selves, and we are all trying our best but everyone makes mistakes,” says Straub. “The point I came to is that being an adult is not synonymous with having it all figured out.” The story follows the Strick family matriarch, Astrid, her three middle-aged children and their respective families, and the aftermath of their differing life choices.

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“I’m the center of the family sandwich: I have small children whose care I fret over, and I have parents who are getting older whose care I fret over. I’m smack dab in the middle,” adds Straub, who turned 40 late last month. “I used to think that when I was 40 that I would have everything totally figured out — I have a spouse and children and a house and a career, but I still every day am like, what am I doing? How do I solve this problem?”

Straub remains Brooklyn-based. While her book tour looks drastically different due to COVID-19, she’s planning digital events with the bookstores she was originally slated to visit in person. She kicked things off with a Zoom meeting launch event, through the bookstore she owns with her husband, Books Are Magic, complete with a full slate of special guests.

“A straight reading is never the most fun thing, unless you’re one of very few people, and probably a poet,” she says. “I like my events to err on the goofy side, and now I think we could all use a little goof.” Sharon Van Etten and Stephin Merritt from the Magnetic Fields both performed live — lyrics from their songs are featured as epigraphs at the start of the book, and Straub also invited “Gilmore Girls” star Lauren Graham to join her, as well as three debut book authors.

And while Straub’s Brooklyn bookstore remains closed to the public, it continues to ship books to customers and host other digital readings.

“Unlike a restaurant, books don’t go bad, so our inventory won’t spoil,” says Straub, who runs the store with her husband. Although they’re grateful to still be busy, running an online bookstore just isn’t the same as the in-person community of a neighborhood place.

With her two young children now at home during the day and with evenings dedicated to book promotion, Straub has paused work on her next book for the moment; she was 40 pages in before New York shut down.

“I think we are all forced to sit on our life choices at the moment, whatever they are — whether it’s having children or not having children, or being single or living with a roommate who you don’t really like very much,” she says.

Like many, she’s prone to nostalgia. The flip side to nostalgia, though, is the opportunity for change. It’s an idea at the core of “All Adults Here,” that no matter their life choices, people’s paths always offer new opportunities.

“I see this with myself and with my parents — we are all still evolving,” she adds. As a self-described Taurus, Straub finds comfort in steadiness and routine. “But that’s just not how life goes,” she adds.

The grass isn’t always greener, but it doesn’t mean you have to stay put on your own plot.

Straub’s Recent Reading Recommendations:

Lily King’s “Writers and Lovers”

Andrea Bartz’s “The Herd” (“In my normal life I work at The Wing, and “The Herd” is very much about a place like The Wing… where there’s a murder.”)

Janelle Brown’s “Pretty Things”

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Fanny Singer Pays Homage to Mother Alice Waters With Memoir ‘Always Home’

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• Entertainment
• ‘I Feel Like It’s a Fantasy Novel.’ Emma Straub’s <i>All Adults Here</i> Delivers a Dose of Normal Life, Right When We Need It

‘I Feel Like It’s a Fantasy Novel.’ Emma Straub’s All Adults Here Delivers a Dose of Normal Life, Right When We Need It

T en minutes into my video interview with the author Emma Straub, I’m chatting with her husband Mike. This Google Hangout is supposed to be about Straub’s new novel, but it turns out Mike and I have the same hometown, and our eyes are bright with the thrill of meeting someone new whom we can talk to about something besides the pandemic. Soon after he leaves and Straub and I are back on track, talking fiction and family, she pauses. “Hold on,” she says, “we have a 6-year-old who is about to come in.” And so it goes.

Like many parents, Straub, 40, is homebound and juggling two jobs. While she promotes her new book, All Adults Here , and helps manage new challenges for the bookstore she and her husband own in Brooklyn, she is also homeschooling her two young kids, breaking up fights and spending a lot of time playing with Legos.

Though the novelist never could have anticipated it, the cozy saga of familial bonds and strife she’s preparing to release on May 4 has taken on new meaning. Many of us have been forced into inescapably close quarters with the people we love most–getting reacquainted with one another’s most irritating quirks and wondering how to live under the same roof without losing our minds.

These tensions have always been at the heart of Straub’s fiction, particularly in her last two novels, Modern Lovers (2016) and The Vacationers (2014). Her characters’ dilemmas are quiet but universal: What happens when we outgrow the friendships that shaped us into who we are? When we keep secrets from our families, whom are we really protecting? And how can memories from our pasts catapult us back into the selves we thought we’d left behind?

In All Adults Here , her fourth novel, Straub cements her status as a master of the domestic ensemble drama–acutely defining each voice, from a startlingly astute eighth-grader to a widowed grandmother navigating a new romance. The book traces several generations of the Strick family, whose members can’t seem to escape their messy histories in their close-knit Hudson Valley town. Matriarch Astrid witnesses a tragic bus accident, which prompts her to remember an unsettling decision she made as a young mother–and to reveal her same-sex romance to her three grown kids. Her daughter Porter has a few things to share herself: she is pregnant and still pining for a man from her past. And Porter’s niece Cecelia is starting over at a new middle school after getting caught up in drama at her last one.

Straub had her second child while writing the book, and she found herself consumed with new thoughts about parenthood. “All I think about is: What does it feel like to be a person with parents? What does it feel like to be a person with children?” she says. “And what does it feel like, especially, to be in the middle?”

While readers will relate to the comfortable familiarity of Straub’s work, it has also taken on an unexpected air of escapism. Straub laughs at the thought: “My book started out as normal life, but now I feel like it’s a fantasy novel.” All Adults Here follows the characters as they wander the town, meeting in restaurants and enduring awkward face-to-face confrontations. “Those are all things you can’t do right now,” Straub says. “Going over to your high school boyfriend’s house and sleeping with him–we just can’t.”

Community lies at the heart of All Adults Here , much as it does for Straub herself. The author grew up and still lives in New York City, a place that is often crowded and cramped–ideal for anonymity. But in her version of the city, she rides a constant carousel of memories: “I love seeing my ninth-grade music teacher walking down the street and just stopping to talk.” It’s a similar closeness the residents of the upstate town in her book enjoy. The characters walk the streets they’ve known for years, surrounded by the places and people of their youth. For Straub, the setting is personal.

Growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Straub was always close with her book-loving parents–her mother worked in early-childhood literacy, and her father is best-selling horror novelist Peter Straub. “I thought I had the coolest parents in town, and I still do,” she says. Her parents moved and currently live a few blocks away–close enough that earlier in the day, Straub’s mother dropped off a package of chocolate-covered pretzels and a toy for her grandkids, which she carefully left without coming within 6 ft. of the family. Not far from either residence is the children’s school–the same one Straub attended–and the bookstore, Books Are Magic, that she and her husband opened in 2017 to fill the void left by the closure of the beloved BookCourt, where Straub once worked. Straub had no business experience, but the former owners of BookCourt helped her along.

As a mother herself, Straub is now more aware of the decisions her own parents made during her childhood. She remembers riding in the back of the family station wagon without a seat belt. “Now, if my kids are unbuckled, I’m like climbing over the seat on the Gowanus Expressway,” she says. She wanted to explore multiple generations of a family in All Adults Here to unpack how the way we’re parented informs the way we eventually parent our own kids. “We all want total approval and acceptance from our parents,” she says. “That’s what all three of the adult children in the novel are striving for. Do they get it? Sometimes. If they always got it, it wouldn’t be very interesting.”

Straub also probes the gaps between appearances and what happens behind closed doors. Externally, the Stricks appear blissfully loving and supportive. “No one would look at this family and think there were any sort of issues–but of course everyone has issues,” she says. In breaking down the unconditional way a parent loves a child, and the grown child loves the parent in return, Straub illuminates just how normal it is to feel disconnected from the people we should know better than anyone else.

In another reality, Straub would be dividing her time between the store and preparations for weeks on the road for her book tour, but the coronavirus outbreak has put everything on pause. You can hear the disappointment in her voice. It would have been her first tour as a bookseller as well as an author. “Going to independent bookstores across the country is one of my only hobbies,” she says. “I’m really sad not to be able to do it, especially now that I connect with these bookstores on this other level.”

And in March, Straub shut Books Are Magic to the public, per the state’s orders to temporarily close nonessential businesses. In the weeks leading up to the order, she was in contact with other independent booksellers, all trying to prepare for a possible hit to the already unstable business. Books Are Magic, a darling of social media and often host to starry guests, has been surviving, thanks to an outpouring of support from loyal customers. The store is also hosting several virtual events, where authors can connect with fans and read from their books. Straub, who is responsible for buying most of the books coming into the store, is receiving enough online orders to stay afloat for now.

And, as disappointed as she is about how plans to launch All Adults Here have changed, she’s thinking more about other writers, particularly those publishing debut books right now after years of work. “This is a major ‘I want everyone to win’ situation,” she says, scooping up her cat, Killer, and placing her over her shoulder. “I want people to buy any book from any bookstore. It doesn’t have to be my book from my bookstore.”

Her role as a bookseller gives her hope: because what people need now more than anything, she believes, are books. “What are we all doing in our quarantines?” she asks. “We’re figuring out how to walk out the door without walking out the door. Reading a book is the best way to do that.”

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Emma Straub's Newsletter

Book Tour with my Mom, Day 2

More chicago.

With apologies to all of you who sent in excellent restaurant recommendations, we went across the street from our hotel and shared a small Lou Malnati’s pizza and I had a very large glass of wine. Sometimes the closest thing is the best thing.

Today was an epic, and not to brag, but it started with a red carpet.

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The first school we went to was bilingual, and they taught us that the Spanish word for goose is gonso. The kids were so adorable, and productive! They made signs, they decorated the sidewalk, they hugged Gaga’s goose.

Again, our suits from the Consistency Project look good in truly any context.

These kids put in SO MUCH WORK! Big ups to Rita the school librarian!

Then we drove on to Oak Park, where we had a little time to kill before our next school, and so we obviously stopped at the local independent bookstore. The Book Table very quickly earned our love, and I will tell you why.

Number one: they had all of my books. Literally every single one. Even Laura Lamont ! Do you know how often this is true at bookstores I don’t personally own? Never. So I was already ready to pledge my love forever.

But then we went up to the counter for me to sign all my books and we met Linda, pictured here hiding behind Very Good Hats. Linda told us that she reads my father’s book Ghost Story every single year on her birthday. We had a wonderful, moving conversation with her about my dad, and his books, and it was the absolute highlight of our day. Thank you, Linda. Booksellers really make a difference. I have to say, we’ve popped into a lot of different bookstores on this trip, and may I just say, preaching to the choir here: there is nothing, nothing, nothing better than an independent bookstore.

That Linda glow.

An old family friend (he’s not old, he’s just been our friend for a long time) teaches kindergarten in Oak Park, and really this whole trip was just a ruse to be in the Blecha Bunch.

I would trust this man with my life. Look at his pink fanny pack. This is a man you can count on.

Honestly, the best spot, between lunch and library. The kids are FED and ready to READ.

We did our presentation in the auditorium, to hundreds of children. There is one slide where my mom talks about how father was given forks (like, a single fork) for his birthday every year, and the kids booed so loud, it was incredible. Best audience yet.

Brief rest in the school library. Again, wear a monochromatic suit and you will never feel bad ever again.

And listen: the reviews are in. The book is good. If you’ve read this far and don’t have a copy, I suggest you fix that! Signed copies everywhere all over Chicagoland, at Books Are Magic, etc.

Next stop, Milwaukee, birthplace of Gaga herself.

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Politics and Prose – Union Market

NEW VENUE: Emma Straub

In conversation with jennifer close.

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This event will now be held at Politics and Prose – Union Market and will be free to attend. Full event information here. All ticket buyers will be contacted. With questions, contact Carolyn McCalley

The New York Times bestselling author of The Vacationers and All Adults Here returns with This Time Tomorrow , a moving father-daughter story and whimsical twist on time travel asking an age-old question: what would you do differently as your teenage self?

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible . She likes her job, her apartment, her romantic status, and independence yet she feels like something is missing. Her father, the single parent who raised her, is ailing and seems out of reach. When she awakes the next morning and finds herself in 1996, it isn’t just her 16 year-old body that shocks her or the possibility of romance with her high school crush—it’s the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, is there anything Alice should do differently this time around?

Straub’s other novels include Modern Lovers  and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures. Along with her husband, she is the owner of Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn. Straub will be in conversation with Jennifer Close , the bestselling author of  Girls in White Dresses, The Smart One,  and The Hopefuls. Her latest book is Marrying the Ketchups.

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Apr 21, 2024 • 8:00 pm ET

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Emma Roberts, Let Ryan Murphy Film a Horror Movie in Your Home

Sometimes the scariest movies are the ones you least expect. The 1999 film Audition , for example, begins as a romance and devolves into a terrifying horror film filled with torture porn. Similarly, the Emma Roberts Architectural Digest house tour begins pleasantly enough before devolving into a frightening example of a type of madness likely to render you an insomniac for the rest of the week. The video begins auspiciously enough: Roberts is talking about her living room. There is a terrifying, doll-faced pillow on one chair, but that’s fine, there are also flowers. But then she says something ominous: “It’s a grown-up doll house.” What could that mean? Well … meet Emma Roberts’s dolls, a collection of plastic and ceramic freaks.

“These are the dollykins,” Roberts says, after shoving a desk aside to get an “optimal looks at the dolls.” She then introduces the audience to her crew of misfits, who have clearly scrambled her brain with their dark toy magic because she claims multiple are her favorite and multiple were her first. There’s Leggy Jill (ah! Why so long?) and drunk-cowgirl Barbie (scary eyes!), and, most terrifyingly, Blythe, a Wednesday Addams–like doll who has an eery emptiness behind her eyes. Roberts has two of these. The rest of the tour features doll faces popping up with no comment. They are wine corks, cups in the bathroom, they’re on bookcases, on mugs, they’re wall art, and dear God, all of their eyes follow you even though this is a video and that can’t possibly be true. It’s high time that Roberts invites Ryan Murphy into her home to film a horror movie or perhaps a season of American Horror Story: Dolls . We just think that would be— Ah! What was that? Was that one of the dolls?

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Moscow Metro

The Moscow Metro Tour is included in most guided tours’ itineraries. Opened in 1935, under Stalin’s regime, the metro was not only meant to solve transport problems, but also was hailed as “a people’s palace”. Every station you will see during your Moscow metro tour looks like a palace room. There are bright paintings, mosaics, stained glass, bronze statues… Our Moscow metro tour includes the most impressive stations best architects and designers worked at - Ploshchad Revolutsii, Mayakovskaya, Komsomolskaya, Kievskaya, Novoslobodskaya and some others.

What is the kremlin in russia?

The guide will not only help you navigate the metro, but will also provide you with fascinating background tales for the images you see and a history of each station.

And there some stories to be told during the Moscow metro tour! The deepest station - Park Pobedy - is 84 metres under the ground with the world longest escalator of 140 meters. Parts of the so-called Metro-2, a secret strategic system of underground tunnels, was used for its construction.

During the Second World War the metro itself became a strategic asset: it was turned into the city's biggest bomb-shelter and one of the stations even became a library. 217 children were born here in 1941-1942! The metro is the most effective means of transport in the capital.

There are almost 200 stations 196 at the moment and trains run every 90 seconds! The guide of your Moscow metro tour can explain to you how to buy tickets and find your way if you plan to get around by yourself.

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Rhody Today

Commencement 2024–uri to award honorary degrees to renowned actress viola davis, author deborah goodrich royce, and business executive charles royce.

Three to be honored during commencement ceremonies May 18

KINGSTON, R.I. – April 18, 2024 – Viola Davis, one of only 19 people to have ever won all four of the major American performing art awards; and Charles M. Royce and Deborah Goodrich Royce, noted for their literary and investment success and preservation work across Rhode Island, will be awarded honorary degrees by the University of Rhode Island next month.

The University will award the degrees in recognition of their professional and personal achievement, on Saturday, May 18, at 10 a.m. at the Thomas M. Ryan Center on the Kingston Campus. Davis will be awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters, and the Royces will be awarded honorary Doctorates of Humane Letters.

The University will honor more than 3,000 undergraduate and graduate degree candidates from Friday, May 17, through Sunday, May 19, in eight college-based ceremonies at the Ryan Center . 

“I could not be more pleased with this year’s honorary degree recipients, whose lives and work serve as an inspiration to our university and exemplify impressive achievements and contributions to the arts, philanthropy, business, and public service,” URI President Marc Parlange said. “Each of our recipients has had a meaningful impact on their field, our state, and the world, and they embody the values we work to instill in all our students. We warmly welcome them into the URI community, and I look forward to honoring them during our commencement activities next month.”

Barbara Wolfe, p rovost and executive vice president for academic affairs , said, “As a public research university with students pursuing so many exciting careers, it is inspiring to welcome honorary degree recipients who exemplify commitment to craft, to one’s values, and to giving back. We are grateful for their leadership and look forward to the opportunity to honor their incredible achievements at this year’s URI commencement.” 

Viola Davis 

Davis is one of just 19 individuals to ever achieve EGOT status—a designation given to those who have won each of the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards. A revered artist, activist, producer, philanthropist, and New York Times best-selling author, Davis has won Tony Awards for her performances in King Hedley II (2001) and a revival of August Wilson’s Fences (2010). In 2015, she became the first African American woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her television role in How to Get Away with Murder . She reprised her role playing Rose Maxson in the 2016 film adaptation of Fences , for which she received an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 2017. She was honored in 2017 by Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people, and in 2022, received the Public Counsel’s William O. Douglas Award for her commitment to social justice causes. And in 2023, she received a Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration and Storytelling Recording, for her critically acclaimed and New York Times best-selling memoir Finding Me .

In 2012, Davis and her husband, Julius Tennon, founded their production company, JuVee Productions, with its focus on giving a voice to the voiceless. JuVee creates scripted and non-scripted television, film, documentary, theater, and digital immersive content for global audiences. A graduate of The Juilliard School, Davis received an honorary doctorate during its 109th commencement ceremony. She also holds an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from her alma mater, Rhode Island College, and is also a graduate of Central Falls High School in Rhode Island.

Deborah Goodrich Royce

A best-selling author, Royce is renowned for her thrillers that examine puzzles of identity. Reef Road , a national bestseller, was named one of the best books of 2023 by Kirkus Reviews and an Indie Next pick by the American Booksellers Association. Ruby Falls won the Zibby Award for Best Plot Twist, and Finding Mrs. Ford was hailed by Forbes, Book Riot, and Good Morning America. 

The Ocean House Author Series—a salon-style conversation that Royce hosts in partnership with Bank Square Books—brings world-class authors to Watch Hill, Rhode Island. It has featured a wide range of fiction and non-fiction writers, including Chris Bohjalian, Katie Couric, Zibby Owens, and Emma Straub.

Royce writes a quarterly column for Hey Rhody Magazine, sharing her book recommendations and news with the Ocean State. She began as an actress on All My Children and in multiple films, before transitioning to the role of story editor at Miramax Films, developing Emma and early versions of Chicago and A Wrinkle in Time .

She and her husband have worked together to restore the Avon Theatre in Stamford, Connecticut; the 100-year-old Deer Mountain Inn in Tannersville, New York; Martin House Books in Westerly, Rhode Island; and other main street revitalization projects in Rhode Island and the Catskills. They have also led preservation projects such as the Mountain Top Library and Fromer’s Farm in Tannersville, New York; the restoration of Westerly’s Ocean House, a Victorian-era wooden seaside resort hotel built in the 1860s that reopened in 2010. Also in Westerly, they led the restoration of the United Theatre, which was completed in 2022. It has become a cultural center bringing together various forms of art, music, and dance.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in modern foreign languages and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Lake Erie College.

Charles M. “Chuck’ Royce 

Royce is chair and portfolio manager of Royce and Associates, LLP, retiring in 2015 as president and chief executive officer of the firm that he founded in 1972. The firm specializes in investments in domestic and international small capitalization stocks. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Brown University in 1961 and a master’s degree in business administration from Columbia University in 1963. 

Royce is a fellow emeritus of the Brown Corporation. He previously served three terms as trustee of Brown University, established the Royce Fellowship in 1996, which supports undergraduate research and enrichment projects, and established the Royce Family Professorship for Teaching Excellence in 2004 to foster, promote and reward undergraduate teaching.  Royce serves as a trustee for The Frick Collection, along with the Berkeley School of Divinity at Yale University, the Bruce Museum, and the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, Florida.

Royce and his Royce Family Fund were instrumental in building the Westerly Education Center and are working on Westerly’s Tower Street Center, a multi-purpose community space being repurposed from an abandoned school. 

He served on the Vestry of Trinity Wall Street and Christ Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he was instrumental in founding “Courage and Faith,” a series that presents leading writers and artists to the community.

Guided Walking Tour of the Moscow Metro

Description, good to know.

• Pricing details

Departure place

You would like, admiring the frescoes in kurskaya and komsomolskaya metro stations, marvelling at the architecture of the moscow metro, listening to your guide's commentary, essential information *, duration 1 hour 50 minutes, starting time 2:00 pm.

Set off to discover the most breathtaking stops on Moscow’s beautiful metro system on this walking tour.

Some of the stops on the Moscow metro are real masterpieces. Head underground and admire the Moscow metro with your guide.

During your guided tour, you will get to admire the Ploshchad Revolyutsii , designed by the architect Dushkin. There are no fewer than 72 sculptures in this station!

You will then explore Kurskaya station, built in 1938. The design, mosaics and slogans will immerse you in the era of Stalin. You will also see the frescoes depicting Russian victories in Komsomolskaya station.

Then, continue to one of Moscow’s must-see metro stations, Novoslobodskaya , which resembles an underground palace: marble, stained glass windows...

Join your guide to explore the most lavish and important metro stops in Moscow! 

• Availability: every day (excluding exceptional dates)
• Duration: 1 hr. 50 mins approx.
• Departure point: The Kremlin
• Languages: English
• Please wear comfortable shoes
• Metro tickets are included for the metro stations visited during the activity 
• A valid student card will be requested from participants who have booked the reduced student tariff
• A minimum of 2 participants is required to book this activity

Price includes

• Metro tickets
• The services of an English-speaking tour guide
• The guided tour of the Moscow metro

Price doesn’t include

• Access to stations not included in the tour
• Hotel pick-up/drop-off
• Tips (optional)
• All other extras

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Moscow Metro Tour

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Description

Moscow metro private tours.

• 2-hour tour $87:  10 Must-See Moscow Metro stations with hotel pick-up and drop-off
• 3-hour tour $137:  20 Must-See Moscow Metro stations with Russian lunch in beautifully-decorated Metro Diner + hotel pick-up and drop off. 
• Metro pass is included in the price of both tours.

Highlight of Metro Tour

• Visit 10 must-see stations of Moscow metro on 2-hr tour and 20 Metro stations on 3-hr tour, including grand Komsomolskaya station with its distinctive Baroque décor, aristocratic Mayakovskaya station with Soviet mosaics, legendary Revolution Square station with 72 bronze sculptures and more!
• Explore Museum of Moscow Metro and learn a ton of technical and historical facts;
• Listen to the secrets about the Metro-2, a secret line supposedly used by the government and KGB;
• Experience a selection of most striking features of Moscow Metro hidden from most tourists and even locals;
• Discover the underground treasure of Russian Soviet past – from mosaics to bronzes, paintings, marble arches, stained glass and even paleontological elements;
• Learn fun stories and myths about Coffee Ring, Zodiac signs of Moscow Metro and more;
• Admire Soviet-era architecture of pre- and post- World War II perious;
• Enjoy panoramic views of Sparrow Hills from Luzhniki Metro Bridge – MetroMost, the only station of Moscow Metro located over water and the highest station above ground level;
• If lucky, catch a unique «Aquarelle Train» – a wheeled picture gallery, brightly painted with images of peony, chrysanthemums, daisies, sunflowers and each car unit is unique;
• Become an expert at navigating the legendary Moscow Metro system;
• Have fun time with a very friendly local;
• + Atmospheric Metro lunch in Moscow’s the only Metro Diner (included in a 3-hr tour)

Hotel Pick-up

Metro stations:.

Komsomolskaya

Novoslobodskaya

Prospekt Mira

Belorusskaya

Mayakovskaya

Novokuznetskaya

Revolution Square

Sparrow Hills

+ for 3-hour tour

Victory Park

Slavic Boulevard

Vystavochnaya

Dostoevskaya

Elektrozavodskaya

Partizanskaya

Museum of Moscow Metro

• Drop-off  at your hotel, Novodevichy Convent, Sparrow Hills or any place you wish
• + Russian lunch  in Metro Diner with artistic metro-style interior for 3-hour tour

Fun facts from our Moscow Metro Tours:

From the very first days of its existence, the Moscow Metro was the object of civil defense, used as a bomb shelter, and designed as a defense for a possible attack on the Soviet Union.

At a depth of 50 to 120 meters lies the second, the coded system of Metro-2 of Moscow subway, which is equipped with everything you need, from food storage to the nuclear button.

According to some sources, the total length of Metro-2 reaches over 150 kilometers.

The Museum was opened on Sportivnaya metro station on November 6, 1967. It features the most interesting models of trains and stations.

Coffee Ring

The first scheme of Moscow Metro looked like a bunch of separate lines. Listen to a myth about Joseph Stalin and the main brown line of Moscow Metro.

Zodiac Metro

According to some astrologers, each of the 12 stops of the Moscow Ring Line corresponds to a particular sign of the zodiac and divides the city into astrological sector.

Astrologers believe that being in a particular zadiac sector of Moscow for a long time, you attract certain energy and events into your life.

Paleontological finds 

Red marble walls of some of the Metro stations hide in themselves petrified inhabitants of ancient seas. Try and find some!

• Every day each car in  Moscow metro passes  more than 600 km, which is the distance from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
• Moscow subway system is the  5th in the intensity  of use (after the subways of Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai).
• The interval in the movement of trains in rush hour is  90 seconds .

What you get:

• + A friend in Moscow.
• + Private & customized Moscow tour.
• + An exciting pastime, not just boring history lessons.
• + An authentic experience of local life.
• + Flexibility during the walking tour: changes can be made at any time to suit individual preferences.
• + Amazing deals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the very best cafes & restaurants. Discounts on weekdays (Mon-Fri).
• + A photo session amongst spectacular Moscow scenery that can be treasured for a lifetime.
• + Good value for souvenirs, taxis, and hotels.
• + Expert advice on what to do, where to go, and how to make the most of your time in Moscow.

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Moscow Metro Underground Small-Group Tour - With Reviews & Ratings

Moscow metro underground small-group tour.

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Tour Information

Key Details

• Mobile Voucher Accepted
• Free Cancellation
• Duration: 3 Hrs
• Language: English
• Departure Time : 10:00 AM
• Departure Details : Karl Marks Monument on Revolution Square, metro stop: Square of Revolution
• Return Details : Metro Smolenskaya
• If you cancel at least 4 day(s) in advance of the scheduled departure, there is no cancellation fee.
• If you cancel within 3 day(s) of the scheduled departure, there is a 100 percent cancellation fee.
• Tours booked using discount coupon codes will be non refundable.

Go beneath the streets on this tour of the spectacular, mind-bending Moscow Metro! Be awed by architecture and spot the Propaganda , then hear soviet stories from a local in the know. Finish it all up above ground, looking up to Stalins skyscrapers, and get the inside scoop on whats gone on behind those walls.

Know More about this tour

We begin our Moscow tour beneath the city, exploring the underground palace of the Moscow Metro. From the Square of Revolution station, famous for its huge statues of soviet people (an armed soldier, a farmer with a rooster, a warrior, and more), we’ll move onto some of the most significant stations, where impressive mosaics, columns, and chandeliers will boggle your eyes! Moreover, these stations reveal a big part of soviet reality — the walls depict plenty of Propaganda , with party leaders looking down from images on the walls. Your local guide will share personal stories of his/her family from USSR times, giving you insight into Russia’s complicated past and present. Then we’re coming back up to street level, where we’ll take a break and refuel with some Russian fast food: traditional pancakes, called bliny. And then, stomachs satiated, we are ready to move forward! We’ll take the eco-friendly electric trolleybus, with a route along the Moscow Garden Ring. Used mainly by Russian babushkas(grannies) during the day, the trolleybus hits peak hours in the mornings and evenings, when many locals use it going to and from their days. Our first stop will be the Aviator’s House, one of Stalin’s Seven Sisters, followed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — and you’ll hear the legends of what has gone on inside the walls. Throughout your Moscow tour, you’ll learn curious facts from soviet history while seeing how Russia exists now, 25 years after the USSR.

Local English-speaking guide

Pancake snack and drink

Additional food and drinks

Tickets for public transport

Souvenirs and items of a personal nature

Tips and gratuities for the guide

Additional Info

Confirmation will be received at time of booking

Dress standard: Please wear comfortable shoes for walking. For your Urban Adventure you will be in a small group of a maximum of 12 people

Traveler Reviews

This tour exceeded our expectations. Nikolai (Nick), our tour guide, was very knowledgeable, thorough, and has a great personality. He didn't take shortcuts and really covered everything that was on the agenda in great detail. We saw beautiful metro stations and learned the history behind them, including many of the murals and designs.

We did the tour with Anna her knowledge and understanding of the History surrounding the metro brought the tour alive. Well done Anna!

This tour was amazing!

Anna was a great tour guide. She gave us heaps of interesting information, was very friendly, and very kindly showed us how to get to our next tour.

Amazing beauty and history.

An excellent tour helped by an absolutely amazing guide. Anna gave a great insight into the history of the metro helped by additional material she had prepared.

great tour and guide - thanks again

great will do it again, Miriam ke was very good as a guide she has lived here all here life so knew every interesting detail.a good day