Review of Modern Lovers By Emma Straub

Two summers ago, I read The Vacationers by Emma Straub and was underwhelmed. I think I was underwhelmed because it was aggressively hyped as the ultimate “summer read.”  At the time, I compared it to a margarita at Applebees.  It looked like it was going to be a sharp cocktail of a book, but instead it was lemony water in a pretty glass.

With Straub’s new Modern Lovers, I just bought a second weak margarita. Don’t get me wrong, this book was completely pleasant. I did indeed read it on vacation, and it certainly got me from here to there and back. But maybe I’m just getting to the point in my life where I want to be moved in some way by what I read – I want to be deeply intrigued, or brought to tears or hearty laughter. I want to be able to say to a friend, “You have to read THIS.”

Modern Lovers is a book about mid-life crises. The main characters were members of a band in the early 1990s – and thus were “cool” and poised to live zesty lives. But marriage and kids happened, and they made compromises. Suddenly they had all sorts of questions about whether life was supposed to turn out so beige. There are several plot trails – a movie is going to be made about a band mate who died, and secrets emerge; the kids of the two main couples get together and face their own questions about what it means to live authentically; there’s a sketchy new age guru who moves to the neighborhood and offers new hope to one of the characters.

But here’s the thing – for a book that should be dripping in emotion, there is very little fire at the heart of it. Mid-life crises are usually pretty harrowing, right? Modern Lovers is a sweet story, and it’s difficult to do sweet and harrowing at the same time.

So, readers, please tell me – what are some books that really grabbed you? I’m looking for a little more tequila in my next summer read.