Thursday, March 16, 2017

All Grown up: a Novel

All Grown up: a Novel / Jami Attenberg, 197 pp.

I really enjoyed this author's previous titles Saint Mazie  and The Middlesteins.  All Grown up was also good, and explored similar themes of families bent but not quite breaking, and the different ways people love each other.

Andrea is an ex-artist now working in advertising in Manhattan.  She lives superficially, with loads of casual sex, drinking and drugs.  She loves her family but keeps them at arm's length.  When her brother and his wife have a baby with a severe congenital illness, Andrea struggles to integrate this reality into her empty existence.  Smart and true, but very melancholy.

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