Book Review Robert Wiersema Modern Lovers Emma Straub Riverhead/Penguin, 356 pages, $35 Can. Modern Lovers, the new novel fromBrooklyn writer Emma Straub, is a rare book; one that is at once lighthearted and often broadly humorous, while at the same time emotionally true and often moving. The book focuses on two closely connected families, following them over the course of a single summer in which their lives will be upturned and examined, their souls and desires laid bare. As Tolstoy once wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Modern Lovers reframes the question: what is a happy family, anyway? Elizabeth, Andrew and Zoe met at college, when they were in a band together, along with Lydia, who left the band and went on to a burst of fame before dying at age 27 (like Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison). Elizabeth and Andrewmarried, while Zoe married an older woman, Jane. Both couples settled in Ditmas Park – a Brooklyn enclave – and proceeded to, well, grow up. Now approaching 50, Elizabeth has become a realtor while Andrew, the beneficiary of a trust fund, has spent most of his life looking for a purpose. They have a son, Harry, a shy loner about to enter his last year of high school. Zoe and Jane, meanwhile, have opened a popular restaurant in the neighbourhood. Jane is the chef, while Zoe takes care of the more pedestrian matters, including furnishings, payroll and expenses. Their daughter, Ruby, is a free-spirited seeker, who flaked out on her college applications more or less deliberately, and has no idea what she wants to do with her life. The summer in which Ruby graduates from high school proves to be a turning point for all six characters. While Elizabeth and Andrew have always seemed to have a perfect, solid marriage, doubt begins to creep in when Andrew falls in with a local guru who may or may not be a con man (it starts with yoga, then quickly spirals out of control). Zoe and Jane, meanwhile, are on the cusp of divorce, little more than roommates and grudging co-parents to Ruby. When Ruby and Harry, who have known each other all of their lives, begin to see each other (read: sleep together) in secret, the stage is set for long-simmering, universally denied tensions between the two families to begin to manifest. The other factor raising tensions is a production company filming a biography of their old friend and bandmate Lydia. The producers need rights not only to Lydia’s biggest hit (which Elizabeth wrote), but to the former bandmates’ “life rights” so that they (or versions of them) can be included in the film. Elizabeth is keen, but Andrew refuses to sign, as if the secrets of the past can ever remain there. Shifting between characters and points of view, Modern Lovers is a fast-moving, involving examination of both contemporary life and timeless themes. We often look to literature to examine the great topics (thinkWar, Peace, Crime, Punishment, Pride, Prejudice, etc.), but it’s often the smaller stories, focused on more immediate concerns, which touch us more deeply (or to which we can relate more easily). Modern Lovers is a novel of love and sex, friendship and family, restaurants and real estate, written with a deep focus on how we live now. It’s almost distressingly relatable. While readers may begin sympathizing with one character over another, events occur which cause that sympathy to waver, to remind the reader that life is more complicated than simple black and white or right and wrong. Modern Lovers is a multigenerational chronicle of characters forced to look at their lives, whether they are inmid-life, trying to balance where they have come fromwith where they have ended up, or just at the beginning of adulthood, looking to an unknown future but with role models around them demonstrating that whatever they envision may not quite turn out how they hope. With passages which are laugh-out-loud funny, and quieter passages which will resonate at a deeper, more emotional level, Modern Lovers is a crowdpleaser of a book, with something for everyone, a literary expansion on John Lennon’s famous line, “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” CSANews | SUMMER 2016 | 41
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