May 22, 2026
American Fantasy, by Emma Straub
I’ve learned a lot from Emma Straub about the kind of books I want to write—her novel The Vacationers was the last book I finished reading before I sat down to begin my first novel, Mitzi Bytes, in 2014—and this is because hers are also the kind of books I most love to read. Light in the very best way, in a way that takes light seriously, this lightness coupled with real wit, and intelligence that’s equally matched with warmth. Her fictional worlds are a pleasure to get lost in, replete with complicated relationships, family drama, unanswerable questions, and a powerful poignancy.
And in American Fantasy, her sixth novel, she turns her discerning eye to notions of lightness, of pop, and escapism, all these factors melding into a plot about a nostalgia cruise ship for avid fans of a fictional has-been ’90s boy band, Boy Talk, including the boys themselves, now middle-aged, but sticking with their teenage dreams (and fans’ teenage screams) to pay the bills. The novel is told from the points of view of Sarah, head of the production team that runs the cruises with their over the top itinerary, who’s in no hurry to come home from sea after her girlfriend has just left her for a 23 year old dog walker named Plum; Anne, a 50-year-old divorcee who arrives onboard solo after her younger sister (for whom the cruise had been a birthday gift) is stuck home with a broken leg; and then Keith, one of the boys, one of the two who can actually sing, but he struggles with his demons, most of which involve his band-mate brother and his cold not-yet-estranged wife. Over five days, trapped in the unreality of the American Fantasy cruise ship, these three characters’ lives intersect in surprising and meaningful ways
Life is long and complicated, in a way that the lyrics to those ballads the boy bands sang (but didn’t write—and which fans can still immediately recall 30+ years later) never alluded to. American Fantasy is about how the reality never measures up to the promise, and what else might be possible in the space between.
