60 pages • 2 hours read
All Adults Here
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Background
Literary Context: Emma Straub’s Influences
Straub is a New York Times best-selling author whose novels explore themes of love, the passage of time, and the importance of family. Straub’s influences for All Adults Here can be seen through two distinct lenses: her independent bookstore and her relationship with her father, Peter Straub.
In the “Acknowledgements” section of All Adults Here, Straub honors the importance and challenges of independently owned businesses. She refers to her bookstore, Books Are Magic, in Brooklyn, New York, as a major influence for All Adults Here. Owning an independent bookstore is a formidable challenge. Straub’s business is in competition with enormous corporations such as Amazon, a conflict that parallels the dilemma Elliot Strick faces in All Adults Here. Ultimately, Straub’s bookstore is a testament to the power of community in support of books and independently owned businesses. She credits the community of Brooklyn for the success of her bookstore, an undertaking that she describes as akin to having a child. Straub’s own identity as a mother also influences this parallel. Like the adult characters in All Adults Here, Straub understands the pressures and complexities of parenthood, in the literal sense of having children and in the figurative sense of her bookstore. While All Adults Here is not autobiographical, it does mirror transitions in Straub’s own life.
Straub is also the daughter of the famous horror writer Peter Straub. Though their genres are extremely different, Straub’s literary reputation operates under the larger-than-life influence of her father’s celebrated reputation. In Straub’s domestic novels, the father is a symbol of connectedness, the glue that holds a family together. Thus, Straub’s domestic novels can be seen as a testament to the influential relationship between her and her own father. In All Adults Here, Astrid’s children seek to live independently of their parents, but they struggle with the loss of their father and the desire to please their parents. In interviews, Straub has spoken to the importance of developing her author identity separate from her father while simultaneously honoring his influence. In All Adults Here, characters learn how to balance their self-perception with their desire to honor their families, much like Straub’s own experiences entering into the literary landscape.
Literary Context: Domestic Fiction
All Adults Here is a piece of contemporary fiction that is also of the subgenre “domestic fiction.” Domestic fiction refers to novels that deal with the home and the family structure as the thematic setting for character and plot development. First popularized in the 18th century, domestic fiction seeks to mirror the trends and cultures of families throughout time and culture. In the 18th century, domestic fiction was considered “women’s fiction” because it often dealt with women as central characters as they sought to find husbands and homes. In contemporary terms, domestic fiction has extended to more complex dynamics that include men and women of different ambitions.
Domestic fiction became popular in part due to the Industrial Revolution (1733-1913). Throughout this expansive time period, male and female roles in the household changed. Suddenly, social status was not as important as journeys of work, love, self-development, and self-promotion. The Industrial Revolution fundamentally changed Western culture because it opened up new social classes, such as the middle class. Domestic fiction rose in response to the new readership of the middle class, who saw themselves in the strivings and dynamics of family in domestic fiction.
Common tropes of domestic fiction include marriage, domestic troubles, and individual conflict with society. In All Adults Here, Straub incorporates these tropes. Porter is a single woman who is about to become a mother, and she pursues a married man. Her fixation on marriage even while she pursues becoming a single mother highlights the continued societal importance of official church- or state-sanctioned companionship.
In traditional domestic fiction from the 18th and 19th centuries, marriage is a solution to a problem. In more contemporary domestic fiction, marriage is itself a problem. Marriage presents a conflict for Elliot, who is unfulfilled even though he and Wendy look like they have the ideal life from the outside. Astrid also struggles with the idea of marriage, because she was married to a man who died early and is now in love with a woman. Astrid never thought she’d marry again; she was raised in a time when people stayed married and worked through any problems they had. But her status as a widow frees Astrid to fully embrace her relationship with Birdie, and their marriage cements Astrid’s new chapter in life. The troubled domestic situations in All Adults Here include Cecelia’s separation from her parents and Elliot’s resentment toward his mother, as well as Wendy’s disillusionment within her marriage to Elliot.
All Adults Here also incorporates the conflict between the individual and the outside world. Though Porter and Elliot no longer live in their childhood home, their placement in their hometown is both a comfort and a challenge: Porter worries about being judged by her community for her decision to become pregnant through a sperm bank. She also knows that she cannot be open about her affair with a married man, even when she tells herself that they are in love and, thus, doing the right thing. Elliot grapples with what to do with his acquisition of a building located in the heart of downtown; he has the power to forever reshape Clapham by introducing a big corporation to a town that thrives off local businesses. As a man who has always lived in accordance with societal expectations, Elliot is torn by his desire to prove himself as a successful businessman and his respect for his hometown’s culture.
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