Ada Calhoun’s New Novel Is About Flirting, Lovers, and a Woman Figuring Out Her Own Way

"The first few men who read it were like, 'This book is very sad,'" she says of 'Crush.' "Not a single woman has said that to me. Almost every woman who has read the book was like, 'This was joyful.'"

By Sarah Moroz | March 18, 2025 | 3:11pm

Photo: iStockphoto Books Entertainment

Ada Calhoun’s New Novel Is About Flirting, Lovers, and a Woman Figuring Out Her Own Way

“You really should put down the Transcendentalists and read Polysecure,” advises Paul, the protagonist’s husband in Ada Calhoun’s new book, Crush. After Paul admits he’d enjoy being with someone other men want, the unnamed narrator is given a free pass, and she ends up in an unexpectedly intense situation with David, an old college friend-turned-lover—the titular “crush.”

She tries to compartmentalize it as a fling, but their giddy long distance correspondence—which involves round-the-clock ultralong emails with footnotes and multiple languages—reveals the true nature of whatever’s happening between the two of them. It’s not so much the type of polyamory that’s taken the stylish coastal media by storm (see the numerous articles on the subject over the past year or so, mostly in publications with “New York” in their name); instead, the narrator somewhat accidentally ends up with two partners. “I tried to think of myself as Archie and these two men as Betty and Veronica,” she says, wishfully, of Paul and David.

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Paul becomes impatient with his wife’s connection, and their clashing visions about evolving their couple become untenable. Her core traditionalism—about clinging to the promise of longevity within her marriage—can feel anachronistic, and increasingly wearisome, as she has clearly moved on but refuses to acknowledge it. Ultimately, Crush explores when to realize a partnership has reached an impasse, and when to take yourself on a new adventure.

We spoke with Calhoun—a native New Yorker and prolific writer of both novels and nonfiction—about slight incredulity surrounding open marriages, feminist liberation from familial obligations, and refraining from trying to force personal relationships into a tidy narrative.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The narrator glancingly mentions this “swirl” of open marriage articles and books. How much were you thinking about this cultural discourse as a backdrop?

The idea for the book is that she’s trying to figure out how to keep both these men in her life. She’s looking at every possible solution throughout history. Included in that wealth of literature are all these articles coming out online, and books. They’re these potential resources for trying to figure out this thing that’s extremely difficult—to say, “We’re going to flout centuries of what it means to be faithful to someone and what it means to be a good partner, and we are going to come up with something completely new.” It is very audacious, but a lot of people are motivated to do that in every era.

There’s something about it now that I think is coming out of the pandemic. It dismantled all of these systems: Suddenly the rules are not the rules. You don’t go to the office every day, you don’t send your kids to school all the time. These things that we thought were the way things were, that were unchangeable, were suddenly very changeable. A lot of people were suddenly questioning everything. I saw that especially with women, and it makes sense to me that almost all the articles and books I’m seeing are by women saying, “wait a minute.”

Headshot: Jena Cumbo

Do you feel Crush is in conversation with those books and articles?

I definitely didn’t write it to be that way. Emma Straub [the author who runs the Brooklyn bookstore Books are Magic]—told me, “There are lots of divorce books out, and this is not one of those. This is not bleak. This is fun and delicious.” I think, to the extent that it is part of that conversation, it’s just one more woman’s experience, saying: “Here’s how it feels, here’s what it’s like for me, here’s what I was trying to do, and here’s what happened.”

The narrator, nonetheless, seems skeptical about open marriage. She says, at one point, she and her husband “began discussing the online-dating question with a commitment to dialogue rarely seen outside of model UN.” There’s a little bit of skewering.

I think the narrator definitely is skeptical, but is also up for trying just about anything in order to try to make this strange situation she finds herself in work. It’s all questioning. I wonder if people read it like, “This is bad”—because as a writer, that’s never something I want to do, to ever come off as a scold.

At the start, the narrator feared judgement about trying a non-traditional model, but eventually, how she’s perceived becomes less of an issue for her. She concludes: “Whatever I did, it was between me and myself. I’d have to behave in a way that had integrity, regardless of what anyone told me I should or shouldn’t do.” Can you talk about mapping out that evolution?

I always like it in a book where it ends somewhere different than it starts. That’s been true when I’ve done nonfiction too. Whatever the book, it’s about wrestling with that question—how about this, how about that—and at the end there’s some kind of resolution. In this case, it’s these ideas that we’re going to try to control other people’s behavior. Especially as women saying “we can just be in the world who we want to be in the world”; if you just start from there, so much becomes much better so quickly.

Later, the narrator feels liberated when she realizes she doesn’t have to stick it out in her marriage. She gets to say, “Actually, my desires have the right to exist.” This seems like a really gendered problem. Do you think of this as a kind of feminist unshackling?

Well, it’s funny because I didn’t initially, but the reaction has been such that I can now see it. The first few men who read it were like, “This book is very sad. The ending is very depressing.” Not a single woman has said that to me. Almost every woman who has read the book was like, “This was joyful.” One woman told me: “The book made me feel like I still deserve to live.” We were supposed to take care of everybody, and do everything, and make it all happen. I think there is something about just that little glimmer of thinking maybe we don’t have to. At some point, maybe we’re making our own cages, right? We’ve internalized all these ideas about what we’re supposed to do, and then we’re our own jailer.

There’s a bit of a delusional quality in the narrator, believing that she has control over her chaotic situation. She thinks she can create a dynamic that is more “evolved” than others. Why did you have her believe this?

I like the idea of characters always being a little messier and more clueless than the reader. Where there is some element of, like, “don’t go in the room” about every decision they’re making. For me, that’s always propulsive, where you’re just like, when are they going to figure out they’re just being really stupid.

Your two Modern Love essays are focused on your marriage, both the burdens and the pleasures of it. Why was fiction a better fit for Crush, and what did it allow you to do?

I have not been shy about talking about my personal life, and I thought about doing it again. I was trying to write a memoir where I fit in all these ideas, and I talked about all the different relationships in my life, and it was not coming together. I couldn’t find ways to say everything I wanted to say. I started turning it into a novel, and I was like, “Oh my god, it’s so liberating.” To all my novelist friends, I was like, “Guys, I can just mix that up?! It’s amazing.” And they’re like, “Yes, we know.”

Working on my last book, which was a memoir about my dad, I was writing it while I was living it, which everybody says don’t do, although it’s the only way I’ve ever done anything. I was trying to get everybody in my life to behave in ways that were good for the book, and I think that wasn’t good for the book or for my relationships. The idea that I didn’t have to make the people in my life be good for the book, that I could just write whatever I wanted to, separate from my life, has been just remarkable.

When the narrator and David finally get together, she struggles a little with him as a real person. I loved the idea of “demo attachment”—this disparity between the potential of someone (a demo song) and the reality of someone (the final recording). Can you talk about developing this romance with its flaws?

A crush is not a real relationship; it’s completely outside of that. The crush part ends, and there’s something else that starts. You have fights and you make up, you get annoyed and then you’re smitten again. That’s a real relationship—which is not a crush. I wanted to take it to the end of that, which meant not cutting it off at the apex of rapture. It can’t end with a wedding and a baby, right? It has to be a little more complicated. But I think she’s happy—I think it’s a happy ending.

Flirtation is recurrent in Crush. Paul says to his wife: “You’ve got a Lamborghini engine for flirting.” Can you talk about giving her that energy?

I think flirting is a lost art. I really like this idea that you’re not coming on to somebody, but you’re also not setting these very firm lines in the sand—it’s playful, right? There’s something about play, in general in life, that is so important. It can take a lot of different forms, but I think being around other people and making up the roles as you’re going along and enjoying each other’s company, I just find important and undervalued. It’s exhilarating.

The novel addresses the weight of family obligation and the dissolution of a long-term relationship, but maintains a light tone throughout. How do you remain entertaining when you’re dealing with fraught issues?

I always like things that don’t take themselves seriously, so that’s what I want anything I write to be like. How do we survive these things unless we laugh about them? Dealing with forgiveness and loved ones dying and horrible news and drama—if you can’t make jokes about it with your friends, how would you ever live through it? Whenever I’m writing, it is about connecting to whoever is on the other end of the line. You never know who it’s going to be, when you publish a book. There’s always somebody who needs whatever you’re putting out, and I definitely feel that as a reader, where I feel such a strong connection to so many writers, even long-dead writers. Sharing a joke I think is really vital to that connection.

You’re very much a New York writer, but there aren’t really any landmark New York moments in Crush.

There have been a couple of write-ups where they’re like, “this Brooklyn character.” I don’t think I ever state, in the book, where anybody is, because it’s about this eternal feeling. I myself am in the East Village, but I thought it was kind of funny that they were like, “This person is having questions about marriage—clearly they must live in Brooklyn.”