Modern Lovers

A brilliant, immensely amusing book about a close-knit group of college friends—their own kids now heading off to college—and what it means to eventually grow up long after maturity has set in, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Vacationers.

While attempting to maintain their youthful identities, friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth, Andrew, and Zoe have seen one another get married, own homes, launch companies, and start children. However, nothing makes people older than having to abruptly deliver the torch to their own children—of sexuality, independence, and the mystical alchemy of cool.

When the band was at its peak, Andrew let his dirty hair grow beyond his chin, Elizabeth wore a sneer over her Midwestern grin, and Zoe was the lesbian that all the straight women wanted to sleep with. They all reside in the same neighbourhood, deep in gentrified Brooklyn, and are getting close to fifty years old. The grownup world's accoutrements appear to have fit in well. However, the adults' lives abruptly start to fall apart the summer their kids become adults (and begin sleeping together), and the secrets and revelations that are eventually revealed—about themselves and the well-known fourth band member who rose and fell without them—can never be recovered.

In a pleasant novel about neighbours and nosiness, ambition and pleasure, the thrill of youth, the shock of middle age, and the realisation that our passions—whether they be food, friendship, or music—never go away but instead change and develop with us, Straub skillfully blends wisdom, insight, and humour.