Name: The Adults
Rating: 3.571428571428572 (7 reviews)
ISBN: 9781439191859

Alison Espach

Teenager Emily Vidal tries to navigate through the assortment of eccentric adults at her father's 50th birthday party, a celebration organized by her mother, despite her parents impending divorce. A first novel. 50,000 first printing.

A Novel

The Adults

Now available in paperback, “Tom Perrotta meets Curtis Sittenfeld in this razor-sharp debut by Alison Espach, who weaves a wry, devastatingly perceptive coming-of-age tale set in Connecticut’s affluent suburbs” (Marie Claire). In her ruefully funny and wickedly perceptive debut novel, Alison Espach deftly dissects matters of the heart and captures the lives of children and adults as they come to terms with life, death, and love. At the center of this affluent suburban universe is Emily Vidal, a smart and snarky teenager, who gets involved in a suspect relationship with one of the adults after witnessing a suicide in her neighborhood. Among the cast of unforgettable characters is Emily’s father, whose fiftieth birthday party has the adults descending upon the Vidal’s patio; her mother, who has orchestrated the elaborate party even though she and her husband are getting a divorce; and an assortment of eccentric neighbors, high school teachers, and teenagers who teem with anxiety and sexuality and an unbridled desire to be noticed, and ultimately loved. An irresistible chronicle of a modern young woman’s struggle to grow up, The Adults lays bare—in perfect pitch—a world where an adult and a child can so dangerously be mistaken for the same exact thing.

I went through so much with this book. I originally picked it up as I had been pleasantly surprised by "The Wedding People", which was not my usual kind of read but I still ended up absolutely loving in its prose, and plot, and characters. And I think I might hae expected something like that from this.

So "The Adults" is quite a different novel actually, and I found myself struggling to get through it. I did not necessarily enjoy the narration nor the story ending up being majorly about That One of Emily's relationships. The pacing also threw me off a little bit, as I felt like a deeper dive into Emily's psychology as a character would have served the novel better.

At the same time, I found all the other things that the novel would be appreciated for. Teenage Emily's thought process and point of view can be hilarious - big earth-shattering events such as deaths and grief are given equal weight as high school romances and gossip in that both can be mentioned within the same sentence and in passing. (Because they do have the same weight to a teenage girl). The same way the pacing may be an issue, the non-linear narration that jumps both in time and space creates an interesting, dream-like quality to the prose; it is like the narrator is both reminiscing and actively participating in the events.

All of the above to say that the novel is not without its literary merit or that it simply happens to be poorly written. The section in Europe reminded me of Annie Ernaux's writing; I felt like there was a little bit of Ferrante in there, too - if you would like to gain a better idea of what the novel reads like.

Yet still, it struggled a little bit too much to hold my attention to be able to rate it higher or recommend it to anyone, really.

I went through so much with this book. I originally picked it up as I had been pleasantly surprised by "The Wedding People", which was not my usual kind of read but I still ended up absolutely loving in its prose, and plot, and characters. And I think I might hae expected something like that from this.

So "The Adults" is quite a different novel actually, and I found myself struggling to get through it. I did not necessarily enjoy the narration nor the story ending up being majorly about That One of Emily's relationships. The pacing also threw me off a little bit, as I felt like a deeper dive into Emily's psychology as a character would have served the novel better.

At the same time, I found all the other things that the novel would be appreciated for. Teenage Emily's thought process and point of view can be hilarious - big earth-shattering events such as deaths and grief are given equal weight as high school romances and gossip in that both can be mentioned within the same sentence and in passing. (Because they do have the same weight to a teenage girl). The same way the pacing may be an issue, the non-linear narration that jumps both in time and space creates an interesting, dream-like quality to the prose; it is like the narrator is both reminiscing and actively participating in the events.

All of the above to say that the novel is not without its literary merit or that it simply happens to be poorly written. The section in Europe reminded me of Annie Ernaux's writing; I felt like there was a little bit of Ferrante in there, too - if you would like to gain a better idea of what the novel reads like.

Yet still, it struggled a little bit too much to hold my attention to be able to rate it higher or recommend it to anyone, really.

this book was weirddddd like i liked it but i will never ever reread it again, there’s no one i could recommend it to but there is a lot of good things about it too so im unsettled 

The Adults A Novel

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