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Book Review: All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
A disclaimer before you read my review: perhaps I read the book at wrong stage of my life wherein I am very happy and this book All Grown Up is about a single woman not knowing clearly what she wants and even where she does, she does not do anything about it but just sails through the days of her life. Jami Attenberg, the author of the book, has written it more so like a diary entry but where adhoc pages are picked from the start, middle and end and in random order. And this is what basically got to me. I fell the stories flat, but then again “perhaps” if I had read it, you know as blog posts or newspaper articles on an ongoing basis few years back, I would have given the book a higher rating.
I related to some of the thoughts of Andrea, the protagonist and liked many lines from the book (otherwise I would not even have completed the book and you would not be reading this review post), sample these long lines (please bear with me for this I found very remarkable and relatable):
Two blocks away, outside a senior citizens’ home, I find a decent bookshelf, real wood, no nicks. Briefly, I imagine death on it, a resident passing away in the night, her children picking over the china, the jewelry, the sepia-toned family photo albums. Does anyone want this bookshelf? No. I hoist it on my back and head home with it, stopping every thirty seconds to rest. It’s tall, this bookshelf, and it almost hits the ceiling of my apartment. I dust it, and then I paint it white while standing on a stepladder. When I’m done, I wipe my hands on my jeans and smile. Overnight the bookshelf dries. I move it against the back wall of the apartment, and I put all my art books in there, organized by color. Then I invite my mother over to see my new place. The first thing she notices when she walks in is the bookshelf, bright white, and she asks me where I got it.
Now who would not love a bargain when it comes to book? Ok, perhaps, only a book lover who spends so much money on books and are looking for good deals.
Other people you know seem to change quite easily. They have no problem at all with succeeding at their careers and buying apartments and moving to other cities and falling in love and getting married and hyphenating their names and adopting rescue cats and, finally, having children, and then documenting all of this meticulously on the internet. Really, it appears to be effortless on their part. Their lives are constructed like buildings, each precious but totally unsurprising block stacked before your eyes.
Now now now, all of us are guilty of thinking of other lives’ as perfect at one time or the other and thinking why bad things happen only to us or why things are so sad only at our end of bargain, especially at these times when social media always paints an unrealistic picture.
So do you think you are grown up enough? No? Then you may give this book a try and find Andrea’s many thoughts resonating with you.
Keep watching my blog for more book reviews.
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Book blurb: 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. |
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About the author: Her debut collection of stories, Instant Love, was published in 2006, followed by the novels The Kept Man and The Melting Season. Her fourth book, The Middlesteins, was published in October 2012. It appeared on The New York Times bestseller list, and was published in ten countries in 2013. A fifth book, Saint Mazie, was published in 2015 in the U.S. and the UK, and in Italy, France and Germany in 2016, and has been optioned by Fable Pictures. Twitter: @jamiattenberg |
| Rating: 6/10 |
| Genre: | Contemporary |
| Book Name: | All Grown Up |
| Author: | Jami Attenberg |
| Pages: | 209 |
| Publication Year: | 2017 |
Ethereal Jinxed 