All Adults Here: A Read with Jenna Pick (A Novel)

thenextgoodbook.com
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
354 pages

What’s it about?
Astrid Strick is the mother of three grown children- and a grandmother as well. One day as she is doing errands a bus hurtles by and kills a woman right in front of her. The victim is someone she has known for years. The shock seems to heighten her awareness of how quickly her time is passing. With a renewed vigor she sets out to share her biggest secret, and also right some wrongs from her past as a mother.

What did it make me think about?
Does anyone ever get parenting completely right?

Should I read it?
This was a delightful book! When I really think about it - the book did not have a stellar plot but I just did not seem to care. The family was lovely. Lots of family members doing their best with what they are given. Lots of forgive and lots to love- just like most families. I would recommend this one as a great beach read!

Quote-
" That pierced her too- the thought of her children alone, none of the three of them quite adults, still, even now! When she was their age, she'd been ancient."

​" So much of becoming an adult was distancing yourself from your childhood experiences and pretending they didn't matter, then growing to realize they were all that mattered and composed 90 percent of your entire being."

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The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

A read with enjoyable characters. It that grew on me as the plot progressed.

More than meets the eye in this novel about families, aging, birth order, perceptions and authenticity.

Some books are enjoyed because of plot, some because of characters, others because of the tone or style of the language. One might recommend this book for the plot, which moves along, or possibly even the style, which is engaging, but probably not for the characters, most of whom seem more to become fully colored in, more than they grow throughout the book.

But there are plot points aplenty. The book nominally centers around the matriarch of the family, who has a stunning revelation to share with her three grown children. Her middle child, and only daughter, has a very different revelation of her own, and her eldest son is struggling with a weighty decision. Her granddaughter is struggling with a new school, and the reason she left her old school. There's more than enough here to keep us turning the pages.

My biggest issue with this book is the fact that they are not, in fact, all adults. The most compelling parts of this book come from children. Eighth graders, to be specific, as they navigate the difference between secrecy and loyalty, and what it means to really be someone's friend. It is these parts of the book that had the most meat to them.

The book "All Adults Here" was authored by Emma Straub. It is a work of modern fiction that was published in 2020 and examines family dynamics, personal development, and the difficulties of adult life. The Strick family is the focus of the tale, which is situated in the sleepy New York hamlet of Clapham. Astrid Strick, a widowed 68-year-old who serves as the family patriarch, is the main figure in the story. Astrid sees a horrific event involving a school bus and a young kid, which forces her to reevaluate her interactions with her older children and face the transgressions and secrets of her own past. The plot heavily involves Astrid's three adult children, who are all dealing with their own problems. Porter, her daughter, is the only parent of a teenage daughter.