{ "item_title" : "American Fantasy", "item_author" : [" Emma Straub "], "item_description" : "From New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow, an irresistible story about what happens when your teenage fantasy comes true after you’re already an adult.When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous 1990s boyband, and three thousand screaming women who have worshipped them for thirty years. Newly divorced and with an empty nest, Annie is on board as a lark to appease her sister. Once a diehard fan of the band as a teen, her tastes have matured, and she feels out of place amid the sea of bedazzled, air-brushed t-shirts bearing the singers’ faces. Yet when the lights come up and the idols of her youth begin to sing before her, something is unlocked. “Maybe that was nostalgia after all, the music a direct vein to her childhood, the least complicated part of her life. A short cut to happiness.” Between the slushy alcoholic drinks, the music of her youth, and the thousands of middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. By the time she befriends one of the band members -- not just a celebrity but someone also in need of a friend -- she feels like anything is possible. But a lot can go wrong on a ship ruled by hormones and hope, frustration and fantasy. Packed with wisdom, heart, and laugh-out-loud reflections on fame, youth, nostalgia, marriage, and middle age, Emma Straub delivers a richly textured, uplifting story about the magic of revisiting youthful feelings, and the even greater magic of starting anew. Emma Straub is the New York Times bestselling author of six books for adults: the novels This Time Tomorrow, All Adults Here, The Vacationers, Modern Lovers, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and her work has been published in more than 20 languages. Emma and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/79/821/704/9798217046850_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "30.00", "online_price" : "26.40", "our_price" : "26.40", "club_price" : "26.40", "savings_pct" : "12", "savings_amt" : "3.60", "club_savings_pct" : "12", "club_savings_amt" : "3.60", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "30.00" } }

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Getting older is no fun, but one imagines that members of boy bands feel senescence especially keenly. Their fans feel it, too, as their own bodies age and a wistfulness for youth sets in. The always amusing Emma Straub plays with those feelings in American Fantasy, a funny and poignant work about the pull of nostalgia and the appeal of second chances.

This ensemble piece centers on several characters aboard the American Fantasy, a cruise ship setting off from Miami. The draw is Boy Talk, a quintet that sold millions of records in the 1990s and now, with its members in middle age, has reunited to entertain their fans, known as Talkers, for easy money.

Straub skillfully shifts among the perspectives of these characters. One is Sarah, who leads the team running the cruise. At 30, Sarah is “a decade younger than the low end of Boy Talk’s fan base.” She’s also getting away from her Queens apartment and her recent breakup with her ex-girlfriend Lexie. 

Then there are the band members. They include Shawn Fiore, who “bought himself a facelift for his fifty-fifth birthday”; Corey West, the only member who has achieved greater fame in his solo career, from superhero movies to “albums that grown-ups listened to without shame”; Scotty Sanchez, the only gay member, who has resorted to hawking vitamins on Instagram; Terrence Campbell, now the host of an alien show on the Travel Channel; and Keith Fiore, Shawn’s brother, who had to be persuaded to participate.

In the midst of all this is Annie, a sales and marketing rep at Opera Weekly. Annie is 50 and recently divorced. As they set sail, her boss emails to inform her that her young intern is now her direct supervisor. All of this leaves her feeling both vulnerable and open to the new experiences of the cruise.

Despite its too pat ending, American Fantasy is another Straub delight, a work whose light tone masks deeper meanings. At one point, Annie realizes that “life would give you unexpected gifts when you were ready to receive them.” As this gift of a book makes clear, age has its advantages.