Would you go on a '90s boy band cruise? Join Emma Straub on the 'American Fantasy'

NEW YORK – As a kid, novelist Emma Straub loved New Kids on the Block. In her mid-40s, that lingering fandom led her to a boy band nostalgia cruise. And befriending Joey McIntyre. For research purposes, of course. 

Aboard the NKOTB cruise in 2023, the “All Adults Here” author mingled, partied and sang with 3,000 Blockheads there to see Jonathan, Jordan, Joey, Donnie and Danny in real life. This act of embracing the inner fangirl at any age is the basis of her seventh book, “American Fantasy” (out now from Riverhead Books). In it, 50-year-old Annie embarks on a ‘90s-era boy band cruise alone after her sister backs out. Newly divorced and an empty nester, it’s in the company of feverish fangirls that she’s able to reawaken a long-buried part of herself. 

We don’t often take teenage girls or their interests seriously. Whether it’s bands, celebrities or media (see the campy masterpiece “Twilight”), polite society sneers at screaming fans of any age or gender. They’re rabid. Hysterical. Obsessed. 

But they also get the job done. Who else could build lucrative careers as “professional fan” content creators on social media? Or run general admission lines like the Navy, so respected that even the venues honor the fan-made system? 

“People do not respect teenage girls. They really don’t, but I do. I do. And I will until I die,” Straub tells USA TODAY, sitting for an interview at “Books Are Magic,” the Brooklyn bookstore she owns. “Teenage girls are brilliant and passionate and hilarious and they know what’s good.”

Emma Straub wants you to keep fangirling

Straub’s last novel, “This Time Tomorrow,” took a fictional, time-travel lens at grief following the death of her father, the novelist and Stephen King collaborator Peter Straub. She says she cried “nonstop” while she wrote it. When she came up for air, she craved a different kind of catharsis. 

“American Fantasy,” by contrast, is dripping with joy. It’s so darn fun to read that you can just envision Straub smiling as she typed every word. It’s told in three perspectives: floundering, newly single Annie; Keith, the lead singer and branded nice guy of the fictional group Boy Talk; and Sarah, a no-nonsense cruise producer responsible for wrangling the talent, fans and an incompetent assistant. 

“In this world that we all live in together right now, we are all sorely missing joy,” Straub says. “Had it not been for ‘This Time Tomorrow,’ I don't know if I would have given myself permission to write this book because on the face of it, it seems like some people think that it's silly. And it's funny. There's so much humor in this book, but also, to me, it's serious as a heart attack. I'm not making fun of any of these people, not the fans, not the band, not the cruise. I am in just such full support of the complicated fullness of all of them.”

Like her main character, Straub embarked on the cruise alone. If the NKOTB cruise is anything like the “American Fantasy,” it’s filled with themed costumes and prom-like dances, intimate shows and lots of selfies (A 2018 Boston Globe article confirms – “the women begin to cluster around [Joey], as if they are one big cell and he is the nucleus.”) 

“When they were 12 or whatever, they were Teeny Bopper fans, but now they are full adult women who are in charge of everything. They're in charge of their children. They're in charge of their aging parents. They're in charge of their jobs or they're making dinner,” Straub says. “What I loved was seeing all of these women use every inch of that brain power for themselves. For themselves. For their own pleasure and happiness. These women had such elaborate costumes. They worked out everything. I would trust these women to plan anything.”

In “American Fantasy,” Annie leaves dry land insecure and unsure of herself, open to change but not quite sure how to pivot. Surrounded by superfans and cruise regulars, Annie is reminded of a college roommate who made fun of her for liking Boy Talk. She felt childish. 

For the author, fandom is a way of life. Writing books and owning Books Are Magic means she’s steeped in the literary world from all angles. 

“I get to be a fan and being a fan doesn’t diminish me,” she says. “The more you love anything, the bigger it makes you.”

She's confident that “the idea of cringe is evaporating” with younger generations. She wants fans of all ages to relish in what brings them joy. She references the Mary Oliver poem “Wild Geese,” which reads: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Emma Straub made friends with Joey McIntyre while writing her new novel

Keith Fiore, the “voice” of Boy Talk, is going through a crisis of his own. Also middle-aged, with a teen daughter and a crumbling marriage, he goes to therapy to work through “the business of being Keith Fiore.” His brother and fellow Boy Talk member Scott relishes attention and wants to keep milking the cash cow. Keith isn’t so sure.

To build a complex and layered celebrity character, Straub again looked to NKOTB. When she was in her late 20s, she saw McIntyre perform and realized he was so much more than the figurehead she'd grown up loving.

“It was the first time where I was like ‘Oh, this is a person.’ This is a person who has a complicated relationship with his life,” Straub says. “I would say that was a turning point for me where I kept keeping an eye [on NKOTB] but my eye became more empathetic, where I was just like ‘Oh, I see. It’s not easy. This is not easy to do this, to have this career.'”

She wanted to interrogate what a life under the spotlight might be like. She had no idea. So she called up McIntyre.

In a video posted to Instagram just weeks before the book’s launch, McIntyre praised Straub as “my new bestie” and unboxed “American Fantasy” merch, complete with a purple “boybands” hat. 

“This is some really sexy book merch,” he says in the video. In the comments, dedicated fans quickly identified Straub as the author who had been poking around in fan Facebook pages or whom they’d met on a past cruise.

“Making friends with Joey McIntyre” was a highlight of Straub’s nostalgia trip around planet boy band. I credit her foresight as a young fangirl. Could she ever have imagined this? “It really did feel like I was a genius, as a child,” she quips. “I had great taste.”

But “American Fantasy” is not NKOTB fanfiction, nor is it a take on One Direction, or *NSYNC or any buzzy new KPop group. The men of Boy Talk are archetypal but delightfully universal.

“I wanted to make it so that if you had ever loved anything, really, another boy band for sure, that you would be able to see yourself reflected. That it's not age-specific. It's not only for middle-aged women. It's for anyone who has ever loved something so deeply,” Straub says.

Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at [email protected].