American Fantasy

Fiction

Apr 20

About the book

Author: Emma Straub
Publisher: Riverhead

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print or ebook) | Libro.fm (audio)

My review

Emma Straub is my go-to author when people ask me for “literary beach reads.” I just love the way she writes such fully rendered characters in big-hearted stories without ever tipping into saccharine. American Fantasy is not my favorite of hers (that still goes to This Time Tomorrow, to which I am partial because of the way it will make you sob your eyes out), but it is still another good one.

The premise of American Fantasy is: a middle-aged, recently divorced woman goes on a cruise with and for fans of the boy band she idolized as a teenager, and she strikes up a friendship with one of them. It’s inspired by a real-life New Kids on the Block cruise that Straub went on, which is very fun. The story is told in alternating POVs of the main character, the boy band member, and the woman who works for the cruise line and is in charge of making sure all the programming goes off without a hitch.

What we get, as a result, is a deeply empathetic look at middle age, including menopause, the feeling of being left behind, grief for your former self, freedom of the future, and personal reinvention. I think it probably would have hit really hard if I were the same age as the protagonist, but as it was, I still feel like I got a lot out of it.

I also highly recommend the audiobook; Straub’s novels are just the kind of storytelling and prose that lend themselves to easy listening while also packing a punch.