What If Jill Eisenstadt Could Actually Write????????????????????

                                I hate bashing Jill--no, I really don't--but Emma Straub's "Modern Lovers" kept reminding me of the kind of material Eisenstadt writes--only Straub is so much better at it.

                                Liz and Andrew, Zoe and Jane, Ruby and Harry...no this is not a Paul Mazursky film, but a saga of sorts, about college friends gravitating to Ditmas Park, and Ditmars Street, in Brooklyn, raising their children, and coping with their adult lives.  Andrews whole trope with the Yoga Studio almost was a real life mirror of "AHS: Cult," and I thought he was extremely gullible.  Elizabeth here kept me thinking of Elizabeth in "The Help," only not quite as damaging, but still she wants that illusion of perfection SO much.  My God, she becomes a real estate agent.

                                 As for Lydia, and the song--well, darlings, if there is a movie I want to play her!

                                The children, Ruby and Harry, were so endearing and wild they also could have fit right in to the world of Garth Risk Halberg's "City On Fire," had the grown up in the Seventies.  They were refreshingly individualistic, and non-Millennial.  At least, I thought so.

                                 Even the business side of Zoe and Jane's lives--the restaurant, (Hyacinth) the bakery (Hot and Sweet)--is so Brooklyn it made me want to start up something.  Trouble with me is, I don't know what, and I am not skilled enough to hang out my shingle as a Tarot reader.  But, with time, who knows.

                                There is no question that Emma is Peter's daughter.  There is just too much of a resemblance.  Her venue of choice--personal relations--belongs as much to her as horror did and does to her father.  There are hidden domestic horrors here, but none as morbid as reality or what her father creates.  Though Emma's book is part of my Brat Pack project, it was the least bratty of the lot. It has a youthful vibrancy, minus the snarkiness of the earlier Brat Pack authors, and, I am telling you, she can write rings around Jill Eisenstadt. And within the same venue, too.

                                 I was intrigued by "Modern Lovers," and Emma as a writer, when the book first came out, but I put off so much time in finally getting to it.  I am so glad I did.

                                  Thoughtful, insightful, well written, fun!

                                   Thank you, Emma!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!