Crush: A Novel

by Ada Calhoun Narrated by Robyn Maryke

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

There's nothing like the blood-rushing feel of a crush — especially when you're married. Gripping, witty and wry, this is perfect for fans of Dept. of Speculation and Fleishman is in Trouble.

A Today show, New Yorker, Washington Post, New York Times, Time, Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country, Bustle, Lit Hub, Zibby Owens, Marie Claire, AARP, Bloomberg, The Millions, Seattle Times, and Vulture Most Anticipated Book

“Ada Calhoun writes with absolute clarity about the giddiest and most destabilizing feeling-the crush. This novel made me feel dizzy and I loved every second. Calhoun can seduce me any day of the week.”
-Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow

When a husband asks his wife to consider what might be missing from their marriage, what follows surprises them both-sex, heartbreak and heart rekindling, and a rediscovered sense of all that is possible

She's happy and settled and productive and content in her full life-a child, a career, an admirable marriage, deep friendships, happy parents, and a spouse she still loves. But when her husband urges her to address what the narrow labels of “husband” and “wife” force them to edit out of their lives, the very best kind of hell breaks loose.

Using the author's personal experiences as a jumping-off point, Crush is about the danger and liberation of chasing desire, the havoc it can wreak, and most of all the clear sense of self one finds when the storm passes. Destined to become a classic novel of marriage, and tackling the big questions being asked about partnership in postpandemic relationships, Crush is a sharp, funny, seductive, and revelatory novel about holding on to everything it's possible to love-friends, children, parents, passion, lovers, husbands, all of the world's good books, and most of all one's own deep sense of purpose.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

[In Crush,] Calhoun’s cleverest feat is blowing us along in this whirlwind of desire and possibility. As ever, Calhoun suggests, women must carve some new path through a thicket of emotional briars. That may sound grim, but rest assured this is not another tale about women’s sexuality that’s so depressing.”
—The Washington Post

“Ensnaring . . . Crush is sometimes so dry or boring it’s funny; other times it’s euphoric, magical or dramatic, and a breezy humor brushes most every page . . . Calhoun makes the specific universal by pointing it all back toward the puzzle most of us spend our whole lives working out: love in its many forms.”
—Associated Press

“Calhoun’s unnamed heroine is a literary powerhouse bursting at the seams . . . What becomes abundantly clear is that the true romance at the heart of the book is a recovery of self . . . Crush reveals the sly ways we delude ourselves into accepting what’s good enough and the liberating ways we can recover our joie de vivre as well as our autonomy.”
—The Boston Globe

“Calhoun has a gift for explaining complicated emotions with concise, carefully chosen prose.”
—Vulture

“Ultimately, Crush explores when to realize a partnership has reached an impasse, and when to take yourself on a new adventure.”
—Jezebel

“Her giddy new romance sets the stage for an exploration of marital constructs and what it means to seek desire at any age.”
—Bustle

“Crush doesn’t follow a traditional novel structure. It reads like a memoir: There is minimal dialogue, even fewer scenes, and we spend most of the novel inside the narrator’s head. Though it’s not a bad place to be—she is brilliant in her introspection and delightfully witty. She can also be exhaustingly angsty, indecisive, and self-pitying. She is a complex character in the best way: annoyingly relatable . . . Instead of a dramatic affair filled with scandal and betrayal, the novel offers a raw, introspective exploration of desire and self-discovery.”
—The Daily Californian

“Crush is a gripping read about finding new love in midlife.”
—Naomi Watts

“Warm and smart and gripping.”
—Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of Romantic Comedy

“Ada Calhoun writes with absolute clarity about the giddiest and most destabilizing feeling—the crush. This novel made me feel dizzy and I loved every second. Calhoun can seduce me any day of the week.”
—Emma Straub, New York Times–bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow

“The word ‘crush’ often conjures the innocence of adolescence—a time when your life story isn’t yet written and anything is possible. But what happens when that dormant feeling is awakened in middle age? Ada Calhoun’s Crush is a gripping fever dream of a book leading the reader into the beguiling depths of desire, ecstasy, and obsession.”
—Molly Ringwald

“Crush marks Ada Calhoun’s arrival as a novelist, and what an incredibly explosive arrival it is. This book is a sumptuous exploration of how desire takes us over without a shred of moral hedging. A vertiginous—yet somehow also clarifying—novel that will grab you by your shoulders and shake you until you feel alive.”
—Isaac Fitzgerald, New York Times–bestselling author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts

“I didn’t just read Crush; I inhaled it like it would save my life. Calhoun captures the chaotic experience of a marriage’s dissolution and a new midlife romance with the insight and humor she brings to all her work. I loved this book. And I loved its honest depiction of what love can do to and for us.”
—Bethany Ball, author of The Pessimists

“Visceral, intelligent, funny, emotional, and layered. A revolutionary romance for the ‘good girls’ among us.”
—Shauna Niequist, author of the New York Times bestseller I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet

In Crush, desire is an irresistible force. Ada Calhoun is a master at capturing the way we live now, and her propulsive, witty, dreamy debut novel made me feel like I was exchanging secrets with my smartest friend. A heady delight.
—Claire Dederer, nationally bestselling author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

“Calhoun captures the giddy high of desire. This romp through a middle-aged crush is as smart and sharp as you’d expect from the author of Also a Poet. Calhoun’s quick-paced story invites readers to lose themselves to the possibility of love taking unexpected shapes, while also providing a jumping-off point for exploring art and culture. Regardless of how readers engage with the story, they will find in Crush an opportunity to view the world through a new lens.”
—BookPage (starred review)

“Crush (such a charged word) interrogates all that we think we know about love and soul mates, commitment and conviction, while tracking the long struggle to fully become oneself and do right . . . [An] angsty, metaphysical, literature-besotted love story.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“Chock-full of great lines . . . Anything Ada Calhoun wants to write is well worth reading.”
—Kirkus Review

APRIL 2025 - AudioFile

Robyn Maryke deftly delivers this exploration of a woman's journey into polyamory. The narrator, who never reveals her name, begins the story with recollections of the times her husband, Paul, encouraged her to flirt with and maybe kiss other men. As a wife, she reflects on her role in their marriage, while as a spiritual person, she grapples with moral discomfort as Paul continues to advocate for a polyamorous relationship. In response, the narrator begins an email correspondence with an old friend, David, in which she must navigate the complex emotions of love and infatuation. Maryke effectively conveys the narrator's trepidation. She adds to the initial thrill with upbeat pacing and inflection and slows the story when the narrator struggles with her multiple relationships. S.K.G. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2024-10-07
A happily married wife and mother discovers the crazy joy of a new love.

Calhoun’s debut novel, following the wonderful memoirAlso a Poet (2022), is chock-full of great lines, both hers and quotations from other writers. At the beginning of the extramarital emotional affair that is the subject of the novel, she observes, “Crushes had always made me feel powerful. This was the opposite. I was lit up, but I wasn’t in control. None of my old tricks worked anymore. I was rich in a defunct currency. A trillion zloty and I couldn’t buy a stick of gum.” While the whole situation begins when her husband, Paul, suggests that they incorporate some flexibility into their marriage, the unnamed narrator’s interest in David, “a handsome friend from college,” quickly outstrips any planned limits and becomes completely consuming. After six weeks of email correspondence comprising 182,000 words in total, they meet on Zoom with cataclysmic results: “We stared at each other. I thought I might die; the cause of death would be a desire to tousle his hair.” Readers ofAlso a Poet will notice that the narrator’s cranky, ailing, self-centered father seems an autobiographical element, and will appreciate the satisfying resolution of the relationship offered here. The novel bogs down a bit once the crush has peaked; it gets less funny and creeps toward annoyingly rhapsodic. “Since David and I had started talking, I’d had more new experiences than at any time since babyhood, when I was learning to walk and talk and eat solid food. Loving him had been my liberation. Everything had blown up and everything seemed deliriously possible.” But of those possibilities, the one that occurs is exactly what you would expect. Oh, well. That’s delirium for you.

Anything Ada Calhoun wants to write is well worth reading.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192206805
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/25/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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