Andrea gave up her career as an artist to work for an advertising company. Now in her late thirties, Andrea hates her job, she drinks a lot, she has sex with men she ends up hating, and she has a strange relationship with her mother. As people around her seem to find happiness and success, Andrea still doesn’t know what she wants in her life.
The story alternates between the past and the present as Andrea revisits the events that affected her life: the death of her drug-addicted father when she was a teenager; her relationship with her brother, her sister-in-law, and her mother; her relationship with men, but also her relationship with art which she gave up because she couldn’t see a future in it. Sharp, honest, and humorous, this is a novel about family, love, friendship and finding a purpose in life. An emotional journey of a woman as she struggles to find her own identity and to release her dreams. (NP)
All Grown Up, by Jami Attenberg, is about a life lived entirely on her own terms. The summary says: "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 re-examine what really matters. Will this drive them together or tear them apart?" All Grown Up is out March 2017.