Modern Lovers

Acknowledgments

Enormous thanks to my glamorous agent, Claudia Ballard, as well as Laura Bonner and Tracy Fisher at WME, and to the whole team at Riverhead Books, especially Sarah McGrath, Claire McGinnis, Geoff Kloske, Lydia Hirt, Danya Kukafka, Jynne Martin, and Kate Stark. Thanks to Riverheaders emeritus Megan Lynch and Ali Cardia for their continued love and support. Thanks to my UK squad, Jessica Leeke and Cathryn Summerhayes. Thanks to the friends who loaned me their rich and varied expertise for this book: Rob Newton, Kerry Diamond, Bill Sheppard, Jo Anne Kennedy, Stephin Merritt, Meg Wolitzer, Lorrie Moore, the staff of Rookie, Ry Russo Young, Christina Rentz, and Isabel Parkey.

Special thanks to my family: the Straubs, the Royals, and my handsome husband, Michael Fusco-Straub, without whom I would be forever lost. Astonished thanks and total devotion to my two beautiful children, one of whom is still inside my body as I write this, but who is expected to make his entrance into the world before too long.

Thanks as always to my beloved independent bookstores, and their brilliant proprietors and booksellers, especially Mary Gannett and Henry Zook of BookCourt, Stephanie Valdez and Ezra Goldstein of Community, my sugarplum Christine Onorati of WORD, Jessica Bagnulo and Rebecca Fitting of Greenlight, and Parnassus’ Niki Coffman and Ann Patchett. I would also like to thank Ann Patchett for being Ann Patchett.

And last, thanks and love to the old friends I’ve kept, and also to the friends I haven’t, with kisses unkissed flying toward them across time, space, and circumstance.