All Grown Up

Jami Attenberg

Mar 2017 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

A national bestseller from the New York Times best-selling author of The Middlesteins, All Grown Up is a wickedly funny novel about a thirty-nine-year-old single, childfree woman who defies convention as she seeks connection.

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.

Ratings and reviews

It doesn't end. Nothing really happens in the end

About the author

Jami Attenberg is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up, a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You, and, most recently, 1000 Words: A Writer's Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. She is the founder of the annual #1000WordsofSummer project, and maintains the popular Craft Talk newsletter year-round. Her work has been published in sixteen languages. She lives in New Orleans.