Emma Straub Wrote This For Your Pleasure

In 2023, Emma Straub set sail on the Carnival Conquest, a 110,000-ton cruise ship carrying nearly 3,000 vacationers, 1,150 crew members, multiple pools, a waterslide, a mini golf course, and all five members of the ’80s teen pop boy band sensation New Kids on the Block.

The NKOTB Cruise, now on hiatus, was a mostly annual offering since 2009 that invited Blockheads, as their fans are known, to travel with the band from Miami to Half Moon Cay, a private island in the Bahamas. The itinerary was packed with concerts, beach parties, costumed theme nights, and photo ops.

For Straub, 45, whose childhood bedroom was plastered with NKOTB posters, the chance to join in on the fun felt like fate. She expected to be swept up in the magic of seeing her idols of yore in the flesh. But as the ship made its way south, she discovered there was something even more appealing than watching 52-year-old Jordan Knight dance to “I’m Too Sexy” while clad in a cowboy hat. It was seeing her fellow, often older, Blockheads act out their completely unembarrassed appetite for the men.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. It was just middle-aged women drinking so heavily, dancing, and screaming until 3 o’clock in the morning every day,” she tells Bustle. “I wanted to know, what does it feel like to be a 50-year-old woman surrounded by other middle-aged women who are screaming at these five middle-aged men who are shaking their butts?”

Straub’s seventh novel for adults, American Fantasy, seeks to answer exactly that with the fictional Boy Talk band and their fans, the Talkers, on a four-day cruise. The novel is written from multiple perspectives, including Annie, a freshly divorced marketing executive and reluctant traveler; Keith, Boy Talk’s brooding lead singer trapped in an unhappy marriage; and Sarah, the band’s recently heartbroken entertainment director.

American Fantasy’s embrace of kitsch and nostalgia marks a thematic turn from Straub’s most recent novel. This Time Tomorrow, published in 2022, follows Alice, a semi-content New Yorker turning 40 who travels back in time to contend with her father’s imminent death. Straub wrote it while her own father, novelist Peter Straub, was dying. “I cried so much writing that book,” she says “[So with American Fantasy] I just wanted to give myself joy. Deranged, unhinged, sometimes gross and weird joy. And I was also very much thinking about pleasure.”

She delivered. Portraying dreamy days fueled by the boat’s signature cocktail, the Sexy Sunrise, Straub celebrates both the grand and unsung pockets of joy that life has to offer.

While she doesn’t shy away from some of the more sinister aspects of the boy band machine (including Annie’s randomly assigned cabinmate getting caught stealing in an MLM scheme headed by one of the boys), Straub also explores gleeful human connection and the inevitability of change.

Below, she opens up about owning two bookstores, perimenopause, and meeting Andy Cohen.

You’ve said you’re interested in the “predatory” forces behind big music groups. How do you feel band management has evolved since the NKOTB days?

I do think that there’s a major difference these days. I think with BTS, BLACKPINK, and even One Direction, the bands seem put together with the understanding that one of these members, if not all of them, will want to go on to do things on their own. I think nowadays that is kind of baked in, which makes it so much easier for them [to branch out].

I don’t doubt that all those kids are so controlled and that everything they eat, drink, say is policed. I started the KATSEYE documentary series [Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE] but had to stop because it made me too sad. But I do think that in the olden days, with *NSYNC, you were not allowed to go and release a solo record, and if you did, it was the end.

I want all the boy bands to be more of an open-marriage situation. They should start with the understanding that if you explore things on your own, it actually is additive often to the group.

You opened a bookstore in Brooklyn in 2017 and expanded to a second location a mile away in 2022. Do you think that running Books Are Magic and interacting with readers day to day has changed the way you write?

In certain ways, yes, it’s definitely broadened my reading, and there’s no way that doesn’t help the writing. Reading is the most important component of writing anything. But I think what I’ve realized at the store is that you can’t choose your voice or the kinds of stories you’re drawn to. I actually find that comforting because I think it would be really easy to be like, Romantasy sure is having a moment, I’d better write something where a woman falls in love with a beast of some kind. But that’s not me, and that’s fine.

In American Fantasy, Annie is going through perimenopause. Miranda July’s hit 2024 novel All Fours explored that same stage. Why do you think this topic is resonating with readers right now?

Hopefully what it means is that the shame and embarrassment of it is lessening. I’m a geriatric millennial, I’m right on the cusp of millennial and Gen X. I think it has to do with us being the first generation who had the internet and therefore shared things publicly.

And I’m so glad because I can’t really imagine doing this, going through all these huge milestones and transitions — perimenopause or just middle age or having an empty nest — and not talking about it. Yikes, what a nightmare. Anything in life feels easier if you’re not alone.

That’s really what the book is about, saying: Yes, you’re in the middle of it, baby. You’ve got kids, you’ve got aging parents. Life is hard. Work is hard. But here is something that is just for you.

You were on Watch What Happens Live in March. What was that like?

It really was on another planet — a fantasy world, only the person in charge was Andy Cohen. And you go up in the elevator, and you hear the audience of bachelorette parties screaming. The women in the audience are having cocktails, and they are so pumped.

Andy Cohen looked so beautiful. He’s a handsome guy, but he’s made good choices. Whatever he’s doing to preserve himself, like... that man is all muscle, all silver fox. The movie stars were nice to me. It felt crazy. It felt like I was hallucinating the entire time.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.