Novelist Emma Straub

Fresh Air

NPR

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2022

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

Straub's new novel, This Time Tomorrow, is a time-travel fantasy about a 40-year-old woman who's tending to her ailing father — until, that is, the day she's transported to her childhood home on her 16th birthday. Straub owns the independent bookstore Books Are Magic in Brooklyn. She spoke with contributor Tonya Mosley about pre-grieving, rejection, and what she'd tell her 16-year-old self.

Also, Justin Chang reviews Top Gun: Maverick.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross.
0:02.9	Our guest Emma Straub has written a new novel called This Time Tomorrow.
0:07.8	It's on the list of books our book Critic Marine Carrigan recommends reading this summer.
0:13.3	Marine described it as a time travel fantasy, and viewed with Straub's signature awareness
0:18.3	of the infinite ways we humans make life harder for ourselves.
0:23.7	Straub's other books include All Adults Here, The Vacationers, and Modern Lovers.
0:28.6	She's also co-owner of the Brooklyn Independent Bookstore Books or Magic.
0:33.0	She spoke with Fresh Air's guest interviewer, Tanya Mosley.
0:37.5	Who hasn't in some way looked at life and wondered, what would it be like to go back in time
0:43.3	to make different choices?
0:45.1	Maybe relive a chapter that set the path forward to where you are now.
0:49.5	Emma Straub explores the possibility in her new novel called This Time Tomorrow.
0:54.6	It's about a woman named Alice, who is living a quaint life in New York City, working as an
0:59.8	admissions officer at the same private high school she graduated from, while tending to her
1:04.7	ailing father.
1:06.6	The morning after Alice's 40th birthday, she wakes up to find herself back in the year 1996,
1:13.3	reliving her 16th birthday.
1:15.6	And she gets a chance to answer a question that many of us wish we could.
1:20.2	Is there anything in the past that we would change given the chance?
1:25.3	Emma Straub, welcome to Fresh Air.
1:28.3	Thank you so much for having me.
1:30.9	I was hoping that you'd start with the reading, the moment that your main character, Alice,
	...

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