All Grown Up

Description

Who is Andrea Bern? When her therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she's a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But it's what she leaves unsaid - she's alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her flesh - that feels the most true. Everyone around her seems to have an entirely different idea of what it means to be an adult: her best friend, Indigo, is getting married; her brother - who miraculously seems unscathed by their shared tumultuous childhood - and sister-in-law are having a hoped-for baby; and her friend Matthew continues to wholly devote himself to making dark paintings at the cost of being flat broke. But when Andrea's niece finally arrives, born with a heartbreaking ailment, the Bern family is forced to reexamine what really matters. Will this drive them together or tear them apart? Told in gut-wrenchingly honest, mordantly comic vignettes, All Grown Up is a breathtaking display of Jami Attenberg's power as a storyteller, a whip-smart examination of one woman's life, lived entirely on her own terms.

Jami Attenberg is the New York Times bestselling author of five novels, including The Middlesteins and Saint Mazie. She has contributed essays about sex, urban life, and food to The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and Lenny Letter, among other publications. She divides her time between Brooklyn and New Orleans.

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. -- Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go Bernadette One of the smartest and truest novels I've read about being a single woman -- Hadley Freeman * Guardian * 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 -- Emily Gould, author of Friendship 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. -- Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls 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 -- Helen Ellis, author of American Housewife 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. -- Katy Guest * Guardian * 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. * Stylist * Expect to see a copy on every sunlounger this summer. * Vogue * 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 -- Attica Locke 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 -- Melissa Broder, author of So Sad 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." -- Stefan Merrill Block, author of The Story of Forgetting and The Storm at the Door 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 -- Cynthia D'Aprix McSweeney, author of New York Times bestselling The Nest 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. -- Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night 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. * Glamour, 'Best Books to Read in 2017' * Smart, heartfelt, and really freakin' funny. -- Sara Novic * Elle.com, '25 Most Anticipated Books by Women for 2017' * 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. * Kirkus Reviews (Starred) * 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 * Booklist (Starred) * 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? * Nylon * 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. * Martha Stewart Living 'Page-Turners For 2017' * 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. -- Tanya Sweeney * Sunday Business Post * Sharply funny ... I didn't want Andrea as a best friend, but I felt enriched by her take on the world. * Financial Times * 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. * Evening Standard * Attenberg writes with a scalpel, and has presented one of the finest, and most unexpected, character studies you're likely to read all year. -- Tanya Sweeney * Irish Independent * 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. -- Lucy Scholes * The Observer * This raw, raunchily honest story strikes a universal chord * Sainsbury's magazine *