‘Modern Lovers’

Recommend: Yeah!

Read if you like: Sally Rooney, Camille Bordas

Was I frustrated with the characters a lot? Yes, but that’s life! Emma Straub paints a gorgeous portrait of loving and being loved today, where things are changing and evolving rapidly. Marriage is bliss, marriage is suffering, it’s both and you have to choose every day to decide what you want from it.

Literally why am I saying this?? I’ve no idea what it’s like to be married. But I think this book does a good job getting one to imagine what it’s like. I’ll never say a book makes you feel as though you have kids because I think being a parent is an experience that’s unknowable from the outside.

The rotating perspectives, which often annoy me in other books, works well with this narrative about family, love, growing up, facing your past, and coping with the inevitability of the future.

Riverhead Books