Book Review

Desire, guilt, and self-destruction drive the subversive narrative of Peter Stenson’s 2024 novel, We, Adults, which unfolds through multiple perspectives in a disastrous love triangle, culminating in newfound understandings of regret.

This character-driven story follows Elliot Svendson, a twenty-nine-year-old mother, who returns to her hometown with her young child to start over after discovering her husband’s infidelity. Reluctantly working retail at a mall and living with her parents, she meets a skateboarding teenager, “Maddie,” and despite their age difference, they fall in love and begin a passionate—and illegal—affair that impacts everyone within their orbit.

The characters offer their own biased perspective of the events, and we, the reader, empathize (somewhat). The novel begins as a third-person narration with Elliot as the central figure. She is presented as a woman whose life was hijacked by Devon, her now-husband and previous writing professor. After catching him in the act of cheating with a student, she feels justified in pursuing her own selfish desires with Madison “Maddie” Johnson. The story transitions into first-person segments from Devon’s memoir which makes it clear that Devon isn’t evil—he cared for Elliot as she suffered from post-partum while also tending to their new baby, Jacob, when she was unable to function. The events then shift to a screenplay authored by “Maddie,” which highlights his naivety, unruliness, and youthful optimism, and finally, the narrative ultimately concludes with college application essays written by an older Jacob as he explains his family’s legacy with melancholic hindsight.

A strength of Stenson’s writing is his uncanny ability to pull the reader within the headspace of the characters. Elliot’s section offers sarcastic critiques of consumerism, gender, and motherhood—the scenes detailing her experience working at the mall offer brutal insights into the artificiality of the retail world. Her coworkers at Talbots passive-aggressively confront her to enforce ‘Hanger Integrity’ and scrutinize her fluffing and folding. Despite her lack of self-reflection, Elliot’s detachment allows her to have an objective view of consumer culture:

Each store vomited their own music to match whatever cliental they were trying to attract: Abercrombie Euro body-shot techno; Journey’s gentrified hip-hop; Express (men and women) synthesize transgender pop with peppy BPM; Anthropology melancholy-yet-triumphant elf-in folk . . . The combined auditory experience was schizophrenic, yet effective, a constant stimulus . . . spurring the shifting of customers’ mind and their resulting purchases.

With detailed quips, provocative thoughts, and muted frustration simmering just below the surface, Elliot forges her self-destructive path once she begins sleeping with seventeen-year-old “Maddie,” a choice that never seems to cause her pause or to consider her role as a mother.

Devon’s perspective offers unbridled justification of his own actions while pushing the narrative forward after the relationship between Elliot and “Maddie” becomes public knowledge. As he looks back on the beginning of his relationship with Elliot, who was once his student, his repeated justification—It’s not intercourse—feels both humorous and believable. However, he carries deep regrets about the consequences of the outcome. Devon says, “I obsess over single choices I’ve made that set everything in motion. These obsessions are so far past the point of regrets. I pray there’s a way Jacob transforms into a loving, well-adjusted human being.” This first-person narration highlights how everyone is flawed, but what truly defines a person’s character is whether they acknowledge their flaws or remain blind to them. Devon again restates, “Often, I’d lay awake at night. I’d catalog every mistake I’d ever made. I’d think about people I’d harmed.” Approaching midlife, he considers his past with a heavy conscience, and his struggle to become a better person makes him more relatable and human. A strong point of his perspective is the conflict between his expectations and reality, whether immoral or honorable. For example, before Jacob is born, he muses that “there was something romantic about the notion of juggling and sacrificing myself for the betterment of family.” But soon, the tension from Elliot’s severe postpartum depression, her emotional distance from him, and his own childhood experiences with emotionally distant parents further shape his perspective and personal growth.

While the sections from Elliot and Devon’s points of view hold emotional insights from adults, the film script from “Maddie,” titled STATUTORY, highlights his naïve optimism and social malleability as he describes the events from his perspective. The theme of regret is still present, but the true understanding of that concept feels just out of reach. His high school commencement speaker states, “But all of you, and I mean every single one of you, will look back at your time spent in high school and wish you’d done something differently . . . My challenge to all of you is to feel this regret . . . let it shape you into a better person.” Despite his advancement to college, his relationship with Elliot has defined him, labelling his as the “raped one,” a view he never considers. In this section, the narrative accelerates, adopting the style of an action and crime drama as the novel approaches its suspenseful climax.

In the final section, ending with college admission letters from an adult Jacob, Stenson muses on the beauty of human flaws and the struggle for emotional growth. Jacob, an innocent character previously on the outskirts from the main narrative, embodies how trauma echoes through generations. Despite his parents’ moral indiscretions and public humiliation, adult Jacob recognizes that parents are just people who are “broken in all the ways the world breaks them, terrified, desperately going through life with the façade of not drowning in loneliness . . . They are doing the best they possibly can, even if that best falls short of what we think we deserve.”  Jacob, justifiably full of resentment, embarks on a dramatic journey of his own, cultivating an acceptance of his parents’ faults.

The changing points of view and diverse narrative styles create a rare reading experience, effectively reinforcing the story’s themes of regret and the imperfect nature of intimacy. Although the subject matter may make some readers uncomfortable, Stenson’s dark humor and wit, à la Palahniuk, entertain while enriching the story’s sharp relational commentary. Stenson has created a novel that is as thought-provoking as it is unsettling. An unflinching exploration of human relationships, We, Adults refuses to shy away from the complexities of morality, making it a gripping and unforgettable read.