About the Book
'Hilarious, courageous and mesmerising' Maria Semple
'Think BBC's Fleabag set in Brooklyn' Stylist
'I'm alone. I'm a drinker. I'm a former artist. I'm a shrieker in bed. I'm the captain of the sinking ship that is my flesh.'
Andrea is a single, childless 39-year-old woman who tries to navigate family, sexuality, friendships and a career she never wanted, but battles with thoughts and desires that few people would want to face up to.
Gut-wrenchingly honest and shimmering with rage and intimacy, All Grown Up questions what it means to be a 21st century woman:
- What if I don't want to hold your baby?
- Can I date you without ever hearing about your divorce?
- What can I demand of my mother now that I am an adult?
- Is therapy pointless?
- At what point does drinking a lot become a drinking problem?
- Why does everyone keep asking me why I am not married?
Powerfully intelligent and wickedly funny, All Grown Up delves into the psyche of a flawed but mesmerising character. Readers will recognise themselves in Jami Attenberg's truthful account of womanhood, though they might not always want to admit it.
About the Author :
Jami Attenberg is the author of Saint Mazie; The Middlesteins, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and was published in nine countries; a story collection, Instant Love; and the novels The Kept Man and The Melting Season. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Visit her at www.jamiattenberg.com and follow her @jamiattenberg
Review :
Hilarious, courageous and mesmerizing from page one, ALL GROWN UP is a little gem that packs a devastating wallop. It's that rare book I'm dying to give all my friends so we can discuss it deep into the night. I'm in awe of Jami Attenberg.
One of the smartest and truest novels I've read about being a single woman
Jami Attenberg has written her frankest, funniest, and most riveting and heartbreaking book yet. In Andrea, she has created a character women will be talking about for years; she has opened the door for us to see ourselves in literature in a new way, writing with skill and fearlessness few others can match
Is all life junk - sparkly and seductive and devastating - just waiting to be told correctly by someone who will hold our hand and walk with us a while confirming that what we're living is true. This is a good proud urban book, a sad and specific blast for the fearless to read. Thank you Jami.
What a voice. Honest and hilarious, unflinching and unapologetic, Jami Attenberg writes what it is to be single, sexual, and childfree by choice. I read the first page of ALL GROWN UP and knew the novelist was going to outdo herself. I am happy to report that she most certainly did
The literature of sex and the single woman has been in the doldrums since Carrie got married and Bridget had her baby, so three cheers for this warts-and-all portrait of a woman trying to find her place in the world and in her own nuclear family now she is all grown up ... This is a novel about how to step up when your smug married friend suddenly gets divorced, or when your annoying mum really needs you; about "being there" for people when you don't even know where "there" is. It has hope, in spades.
Think BBC's Fleabag set in Brooklyn ... Attenberg has a compassionate eye for the gulfs that open between people, and how they can be bridged.
Expect to see a copy on every sunlounger this summer.
I have never in my life finished the last page of a book and wanted to open to page one and start all over again. Jami Attenberg, this book is outstanding
Jami Attenberg's Andrea is the most addicting female protagonist voice I have read in years, with her cutting observations on human relationships. This witty journey through a mess of men, female friendships, family and boozy urban existence positions the single girl not as object to be fixed but as contemporary sage and seer: the ultimate witness of truth in love today
"All Grown Up is one of those rare books -even the greatest writers often only get one or two in their careers- in which an author's unique sensibility meets with the story she was born to tell. This fractured, soulful portrait of a determinedly independent woman -a woman whose radical independence often puts her at odds with a misunderstanding society- is vital reading for women and men alike."
Jami Attenberg's sharply drawn protagonist, Andrea, has such a riveting, propulsive voice that ALL GROWN UP is hard to put down, but I urge you to resist reading it in one sitting. Both the prose and the author's knowing excavation of one woman's desires, compromises, strengths and fears deserve closer attention. Like Andrea herself, this novel is beautiful and brutal, intelligent and funny, frank and sexy
Jami Attenberg's ALL GROWN UP is one part Denis Johnson, one part Grace Paley, but all her. Every sentence pulls taut and glows--electric, gossipy, searing fun that is also a map to how to be more human.
Andrea, 39, is totally single. No kids, no men, nothing keeping her from living her life to its full potential, which she does. Until her niece is born with a tragic illness, and Andrea's whole family is forced to confront their values, their lifestyles, and their choices. Told in vignettes, All Grown Up asks what happens after you've got the whole "adult" thing under control.
Smart, heartfelt, and really freakin' funny.
Deeply perceptive and dryly hilarious, Attenberg's latest novel follows Andrea Bern: on the cusp of 40, single, child-free by choice, and reasonably content, she's living a life that still, even now, bucks societal conventions. . . . Structured as a series of addictive vignettes-they fly by if you let them, though they deserve to be savored-the novel is a study not only of Andrea, but of her entire ecosystem. . . .Wry, sharp, and profoundly kind; a necessary pleasure.
Andrea's story is stinging, sweet, and remarkably fleshed out in relatively few pages. Attenberg follows her best-selling family novel, The Middlesteins (2012) with a creative, vivid tableau of one woman's whole life, which almost can't help but be a comment on all the things women ought to be and to want, which Attenberg conveys with immense, aching charm
Attenberg is one of our finest contemporary storytellers, and here, with her trademark clever, witty voice, she tackles the age-old question plaguing people of all ages: When do we know if we're actually all grown up?
Attenberg knows how to make a reader laugh and feel. This novel takes a hard look at what it means to be a woman living on her own terms.
Positively bristles with energy and newness ... Attenberg has created a tangle of characters with flesh on their bones, and Andrea is the most multifaceted of them all ... a delight and a superb character study.
Sharply funny ... I didn't want Andrea as a best friend, but I felt enriched by her take on the world.
If you ever feel like you're howling into the abyss and would prefer to howl with laughter instead, you should befriend Andrea Bern of All Grown Up, as she certainly shares your pain.
Attenberg writes with a scalpel, and has presented one of the finest, and most unexpected, character studies you're likely to read all year.
Jami Attenberg's fifth novel is her best yet... super smart, often extremely funny.. as angry, sad, and raw as it is astute, hilarious and hopeful. All Grown Up puts other novels in this vein to shame.
This raw, raunchily honest story strikes a universal chord
