All Adults Here (2020)
Emma Straub
356 pages
Emma Straub’s novel
All Adults Here traces the fitful journey of a family working through the long-simmering consequences of unrevealed events, precipitous choices and misunderstood conversations, all within a crucible of a town where, as Nick Cave sings, “to share a sworn secret was a solemn duty.” (
John Finn's Wife) Through moments and interactions by turns profoundly moving and heartbreakingly funny, Straub explores the complexities and conflicting expectations of current day lives and relationships.
Set in the small, fictional town of Clapham, a few hours up the Hudson river from New York City, the story builds around Astrid Strick, a widow with three adult children. Her daughter, Porter, and one of her sons, Elliot, have remained in Clapham, while her youngest son, Nick, lives in New York City.
A dramatic pair of events sets things in motion: Nick’s daughter Cecilia, having gotten into trouble for reasons that only gradually become clear, has been shipped off by her parents to her grandmother for the upcoming year of middle school; and Astrid, on her way to pick up her granddaughter at the train station, witnesses a hit-and-run accident that kill Barb, a woman she has known for decades.
Despite having “never liked” Barb, Astrid finds herself profoundly impacted by the sudden, seemingly random nature of Barb’s death. Confronted with the fragility of life, she begins to shed her normally reserved nature, overcoming her anxiety about revealing the secrets and regrets that she has kept carefully hidden from her children.
And Cecilia, come to live with her grandmother in the family home and hometown she had previously only experienced as an occasional visitor for holidays, faces an upcoming school year at a small-town junior high far-removed from the school and friends she knew in New York City. Like Astrid, she comes to seize the unexpected shift in circumstances as an opportunity to reinvent herself: thrust into a school where no one knows her, she decides to try and leave behind the shy, uncertain girl she has been.
It gradually becomes clear, however, that Astrid and Cecilia’s fears and uncertainties run throughout the family, as both Porter and Elliot also carry secrets, things they are afraid to reveal to Astrid for fear of the consequences. Nick too struggles with the impulsive decision he and his wife have made to send their daughter away from home.
Once Astrid decides to open up, however, the barriers that have arisen between her and her children begin to crumble. And, as their secrets emerge into the light of day, the family struggles to redefine and reanimate relationships that have grown distant and formal. Will they find a way to fully reengage with one another, to find the happier atmosphere Astrid remembers from their childhood?
Straub builds a veritable potpourri of contemporary social challenges into her story: a hidden homosexual relationship; someone fearful to reveal they are trans; a sperm bank pregnancy; an internet predator; and the economic social impacts of large retail coming to small towns. Certainly, each of these reflects pressing present day social realities and discussions, and Straub handles them delicately and persuasively. But it’s hard not to feel that this one, relatively small extended family has suddenly managed to intersect with a surprisingly wide variety of social issues as one late summer turns into autumn.
It also stands out that, although all the main characters in the story have issues to resolve over the course of the story, a fairly bright line exists between the male and female characters. While the female characters seem sympathetic and easy to empathize with in their problems, the major male characters are universally, head-slappingly unsympathetic dolts: one ships his daughter out of town at the first sign of trouble, while another is a stereotypically clueless husband and father, whom his wife disparages, taking a broader backhand to the other sex, with a dismissive smirk:
“Women can do anything. All the things that men are useful for – think about it, what are those things? Lifting something heavy? Taking out the garbage? Grilling steaks? Please. [He] has never properly cooked a steak in his life. And I have to tell him when it’s garbage day. And I can pay someone to move a couch.” (217)
Even one of the minor male characters comes across as little more than a mindless oaf. The only one who doesn’t fit the pattern turns out to have a secret that, apparently, explains his being the anomaly.
But, these quibbles aside, Straub keeps a reader fully engaged in the story from its dramatic beginning to its comforting conclusion. The secrets the characters try to hide are not evil in nature – they each simply fear the backlash of revealing they are human, and generally fear most the reactions of those closest to them. Finally, however, they realize that, indeed, we are all adults here: we can own our foibles and uncertainties and longings, and open up about them – and most especially to those closest to us.
And in so doing, Straub’s characters come to some powerful moments of inner clarity, such as when Porter realizes that
“The good news is that I think you have to stop [obsessing about the other people you could have married] when you have children, because you know that [your children] wouldn’t be there if you’d made different choices. … You look at them and say, fuck, I’m glad you’re here, and not some one else, and whatever choices you made led you to that person, your little person, and so the past becomes perfect.” (103-4)
A sentiment that one would hope all parents can identify with – and must pity those who don’t.
And, at the other end of the long process of raising children, having watched them go off into the world turning out however they have, comes this melancholy realization from Astrid, who notes that “her children were the way they were because of all the things she had done and all the things she had not done.” (127) Letting go is not just the act of allowing our children to eventually make their own way in their lives, but, as Astrid discovers, also forgiving ourselves for what may not have gone quite as perfectly as we may have wished in raising them.
Other notes and information:
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Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
