Synopses & Reviews
The delicious, New York Timesbestselling book of the summer: an irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American familys Mediterranean holiday.
For the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: Oover the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and new humiliations are experienced, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds are exacerbated.
This is a story of the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying tale of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.
Review
"Other People We Married is a revelation." Lorrie Moore, author of Birds of America and A Gate at the Stairs
Review
"Emma Straub is worthy of our adoration. These stories are wise, surprising, hilarious, and unforgettable." Karen Russell, author of St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and Swamplandia!
Review
"Emma Straub is a wry, witty, incisively observant writer." Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply
Review
"Emma Straub's stories mean that there are fewer lonely people in the world; they are the best kind of company. I’m giddy about their very existence, the way you get giddy when you meet someone you'd like to know for a long, long time. I look forward to knowing Emma Straub's fiction for a long, long time." Thisbe Nissen, author of The Good People of New York and Osprey Island
Review
"Razor sharp and tenderhearted, funny and wrenching. Emma Straub's stories take place in all the messy, fascinating, uncanny corners of contemporary relationships." Kelly Link, author of Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners
Review
"Emma Straub has such a graceful, brittle, subversive voice that it takes a moment after you surface from her stories, drugged with pleasure and ringing with sharp insight, to realize how deeply she loves and understands humanity. Other People We Married is a terrific collection of stories, and Emma Straub is a joyous marvel of a writer." Lauren Groff, author of The Monsters of Templeton and Delicate Edible Birds
Review
"The smarts and humor of a Lorrie Moore or a Laurie Colwin or a Laurie Anderson — any number of Lauries." Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead, for the Oxford American
Synopsis
The beloved debut story collection from the New York Times-bestselling author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers. In Other People We Married, Straub creates characters as recognizable as a best friend, and follows them through moments of triumph and transformation with wit, vulnerability, and dazzling insight. In "Some People Must Really Fall in Love," an assistant professor takes halting steps into the awkward world of office politics while harboring feelings for a freshman student. Two sisters struggle with old assumptions about each other as they stumble to build a new relationship in "A Map of Modern Palm Springs." In "Puttanesca," two widows move tentatively forward, still surrounded by ghosts and disappointments from the past. These twelve stories, filled with sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language, announce the arrival of a major new talent.
Synopsis
In Other People We Married, Straub creates characters as recognizable as a best friend, and follows them through moments of triumph and transformation with wit, vulnerability, and dazzling insight. In “Some People Must Really Fall in Love,” an assistant professor takes halting steps into the awkward world of office politics while harboring feelings for a freshman student. Two sisters struggle with old assumptions about each other as they stumble to build a new relationship in "A Map of Modern Palm Springs." In "Puttanesca," two widows move tentatively forward, still surrounded by ghosts and disappointments from the past. These twelve stories, filled with sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language, announce the arrival of a major new talent.
Synopsis
In Other People We Married, Straub creates characters as recognizable as a best friend, and follows them through moments of triumph and transformation with wit, vulnerability, and dazzling insight. In “Some People Must Really Fall in Love,” an assistant professor takes halting steps into the awkward world of office politics while harboring feelings for a freshman student. Two sisters struggle with old assumptions about each other as they stumble to build a new relationship in “A Map of Modern Palm Springs.” In “Puttanesca,” two widows move tentatively forward, still surrounded by ghosts and disappointments from the past. These twelve stories, filled with sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language, announce the arrival of a major new talent.
Synopsis
A Bookpage Best Books of 2012 pick
At once a delicious depiction of Hollywoods golden age and a sweet, fulfilling story about one womans journey through fame, love, and loss.”Boston Globe
In 1920, Elsa Emerson is born to the owners of the Cherry County Playhouse in Door County, Wisconsin. Elsa relishes appearing onstage, where she soaks up the approval of her father and the embrace of the audience. But when tragedy strikes her family, her acting becomes more than a childs game of pretend. While still in her teens, Elsa marries and flees to Los Angeles. There she is discovered by Hollywood mogul Irving Green, who refashions her as an exotic brunette screen siren and renames her Laura Lamont. But fame has its costs, and while Laura tries to balance career, family, and personal happiness, she realizes that Elsa Emerson might not be gone completely. Ambitious and richly imagined, Laura Lamonts Life in Pictures is as intimateand as bigger-than-lifeas the great films of the golden age of Hollywood.
Synopsis
A Bookpage Best Books of 2012 pick
At once a delicious depiction of Hollywoods golden age and a sweet, fulfilling story about one womans journey through fame, love, and loss.”Boston Globe
In 1920, Elsa Emerson is born to the owners of the Cherry County Playhouse in Door County, Wisconsin. Elsa relishes appearing onstage, where she soaks up the approval of her father and the embrace of the audience. But when tragedy strikes her family, her acting becomes more than a childs game of pretend. While still in her teens, Elsa marries and flees to Los Angeles. There she is discovered by Hollywood mogul Irving Green, who refashions her as an exotic brunette screen siren and renames her Laura Lamont. But fame has its costs, and while Laura tries to balance career, family, and personal happiness, she realizes that Elsa Emerson might not be gone completely. Ambitious and richly imagined, Laura Lamonts Life in Pictures is as intimateand as bigger-than-lifeas the great films of the golden age of Hollywood.
Synopsis
An astute, lively, and heartfelt debut story collection by an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction Marine Parkin the far reaches of Brooklyn, train-less and tourist-freefinds its literary chronicler in Mark Chiusano. Chiusanos dazzling stories delve into family, boyhood, sports, drugs, love, and all the weird quirks of growing up in a tight-knit community on the edge of the city. In the tradition of Junot Díazs Drown, Stuart Dybeks The Coast of Chicago, and Russell Bankss Trailerpark, this is a poignant and piercing collectionannouncing the arrival of a distinct new voice in American fiction.
About the Author
Emma Straub is from New York City. She is the author of the short story collection
Other People We Married. Her fiction and non-fiction have been published in
Vogue, Tin House, The New York Times, and
The Paris Review Daily, and she is a staff writer for
Rookie. Straub lives with her husband in Brooklyn, where she also works as a bookseller.