In Emma Straub's buoyant seventh book, American Fantasy, a reunion cruise assembles several people dissatisfied with their lives and hoping to reclaim a sense of possibility.
The Boy Talk 2023 cruise is a five-day route aboard the American Fantasy from Miami to the Bahamas. Thirty-year-old Sarah, head of the JackRabbit production team in charge of the talent, is nursing a broken heart after her girlfriend left. The other two point-of-view characters are Annie, a passenger, and Keith Fiore, one of the five boy band members. Keith's older brother, Shawn, is the de facto band leader, eager to prolong the group's success through a world tour. Keith, however, is reluctant. A recovering alcoholic, he'd prefer privacy to live as a normal person and work on his marriage.
This vacation was meant for Annie's sister Katherine's 45th birthday, but when Katherine broke her leg, Annie decided to go alone. The 50-year-old divorcée has just been demoted at Opera Weekly, placed beneath a young TikTok whiz. Annie isn't a Boy Talk superfan like the cruise's other "Talkers." With her slight detachment, she can recognize the absurdity of middle-aged women wearing the singers' faces on custom-made garments and queuing for hours to hug them. At her own meet-and-greet, Annie asks Keith if he's okay. Taken aback by a genuine question rather than the usual fawning, he finds himself interested in Annie, and over the next few days they form a connection.
Micro-chapters replicate the highly scheduled fun of a cruise. Each night there's another themed party: 1980s, pajamas, prom. Thanks to the $50/day alcohol package, Talkers drink bottomless "Sexy Sunrise" cocktails. The hedonistic atmosphere fosters resentments--and even fistfights--among the band and the passengers.
Compared to the other two protagonists, Sarah gets short shrift, and the round of performances and photo ops can get as repetitive for readers as for the band. Still, this is a potent picture of the downsides of fame and the struggles of midlife. Straub (This Time Tomorrow; All Adults Here) discusses her own New Kids on the Block obsession on her Substack, but this is no simple nostalgia trip. Annie's predicament involves genuine pain but also encourages openness to the future. "That was where she was in life. She'd checked all the boxes--the marriage, the child, the career. What happened now was anyone's guess." The novel's title is true to the wish-fulfillment nature of the plot, making it a perfect follow-up for fans of Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck
Shelf Talker: Emma Straub's seventh book blends joviality and disappointment, nostalgia and realism, via the stories of three people on board a boy band reunion cruise.