I adore Jami Attenberg's style but I felt that this plot left much to be desired.

Also this cover is just awful. ( )

Jami Attenberg redeems herself with this introspective joyful exercise. Jami uses her writing skills to overcome this plotless and fragmented book. ( )

I loved the prose of this. I was far more attached to the first half than the second half (though perhaps something is to be said for the books that keep one company during insomniac phases) but just loved the ways the characters were drawn and how it was ultimately about the one connection. Very well done. ( )

When I finished All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg,* I had this thought- people are either going to absolutely love this book, like super devotion to it, cult classic type love of this book OR people will absolutely hate this book and simply not get it. I think it might be that dividing line for readers of the book. Now stating that, I can say that I liked it, but a strong part of me didn't "get it." I got a strong "HBO Girls" type vibe off of this book and I don't get that show either, so I use that as a reference point.

The book is about Andrea, who is 39 and just about to turn 40. She is in a place in her life where she is comfortable where she is as a single woman living in NY. She has dad issues as she sleeps with many men trying to fill the space where her dad should be (her thoughts, not my analysis), often times not really into the sex or into the man she is with.

She struggles with abandonment from her mother who moved away, but seems to be having a fine life outside of NYC. Her mother is also demanding of Andrea as when she will have a baby and "grow up?"

Andrea though is in a place where she is content, but also wonders if she should be someone else at this point in her life. This is a sort of coming of age book as Andrea prepares to enter midlife. Is she fine with her life choices or is she just settling?

I turned 40 a few years ago and when I did, I had a career and have had it for 19 years at that point. I had a wife (still do) and had been married for a long time. I was not needy for my parents (even though I love them dearly). What I am saying is when I hit 40, I was in a place in my life where I wasn't seeking any longer, I knew who I was and was content with my life. So, I couldn't connect with Andrea's journey. Then again, I couldn't connect with a lot of people my age who I knew were still seeking who they were at 40.

The writing was great as Attenberg is a fantastic writer. The use of the first person narrative was an interesting choice I thought, especially in the opening where it is a pointed use of "you" before it slips into the "I" following.

I thought this was a fine book and I think a lot of people will connect with Andrea. It just didn't hit with me, but there was a lot in this tiny book. I gave this one 3.5 stars.

*I want to thank NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book. I received it in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Living the Imperfect Life

If you are an artist, but you can’t create art. If you have sex but can’t get into love and commitment. If you have a family but you can’t acknowledge you love them and wish to be part of their lives. If you know from experience and from your childhood that alcohol and drugs will hurt you but you use them anyway. If you get a good paying job as a designer in advertising and you hate but keep it just because it pays. If you do all these things (and, really, who doesn’t do a few of them?), aren’t you just passing through life? And, if you are anything like Andrea Bern, Jami Attenberg’s sharp witted protagonist, you obsess on these things, on your meandering and stumbling journey to age forty.

It will probably come as no surprise to anybody that the vast majority of reviewers, professional and avid reader types, are women. But this doesn’t mean that All Grown Up is what the trade calls Chic Lit. Readers will not find the typical wacky, iconoclastic woman here (though Andrea certainly seems that way, at first), but rather, someone trying to sort out her life, without much success. She claims to know what’s wrong, but does she? If she does, why doesn’t she fix the wrongs? There is no neat, tied-with-a-bow ending here.

Nor does it mean that it’s a novel men won’t enjoy and maybe learn from. Men, generally, even male novelists, don’t do a lot of baring of the soul of the type you’ll find in this novel (though sometimes they do, as in Chris Bachelder’s very good The Throwback Special), and usually aren’t comfortable with the level of introspection and self-knowledge on exhibition in Andrea. You know, maybe they should be. Maybe reading Attenberg’s novel would be a good experience a type of emotional liberation. And it helps that Attenberg is a terrific writer, terrific with The Middlesteins, and as terrific here with a novel about a woman who knows and doesn’t know herself.
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