Book Review: Modern Lovers, by Emma Straub
I enjoyed this book more than I anticipated, but a giant problem with it that I must get out of the way before proceeding with the rest of the review is that the fictional band within the book is called Kitty's Mustache. I reject this name absolutely. Coming up with decent band names is hard but come on, man! Modern Lovers is a cute, gentle book about a set of Oberlin graduates now approaching middle age, living in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. They have grown-up careers and high-school age children. Prior to the events of the book, three of them were in a band, the aforementioned Kitty's Mustache, with another woman named Lydia, who went on to have a famous solo career, predicated upon her rendition of a song one of the protagonists wrote, and then died young. The book largely deals with the aftermath of their brief fame and the ways in which they have, or have not, adapted to adulthood and middle-class-ness. Some of the better parts deal with this last issue very deftly, as when