Fairly smitten with this one. It left me in a good book haze for hours after finishing it on Sunday afternoon. 
 Elizabeth and Andrew, now married with a high schooler of their own, were in a small-time rock band back in college. Zoe, their fellow bandmate, lives down the street from them in Brooklyn with a wife and a recently graduated daughter. The days of the band are long past them, and the fourth member of the band has been dead for years. Lydia made it big and died at twenty-seven and now Hollywood execs want to make a movie based on her life. Elizabeth and Zoe don't mind, but Andrew does mind. A lot. 
 This isn't so much a story about the reconciling of the differences of opinion from the bandmates. They have bigger problems to worry about, like crumbling marriages, job difficulties, and the fact that their kids seem to be hooking up. Straub's writing is sharp and witty. The characters are overwhelmingly female and are ambitious, catty, wise, and so many other things in turn. The short chapters alternate in point of view from the various Brooklynites and this keeps the book moving at a nice clip. There were a few turns of phrase that got repeated and I was never sure if they were supposed to be callbacks or if the author liked the phrase so much that they snuck in more than once. (For instance, Zoe and Jane's daughter, Ruby, was referred to as being "Brooklyn's Eloise" in her youth. Apropos of nothing, but while we're talking about her--Jane wasn't even in the band and she was totally my favorite character.) 
 Modern Lovers is a great summer read--fascinating, true to today, and messy in all the right ways.