Grown Ups
A Novel
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4.0 • 12 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
“[E]ssential reading for our dismal times.” —The Wall Street Journal
One of Bustle’s “Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2020”
PopSugar’s “26 Incredible New Books Coming Your Way This August”
Good Housekeeping’s “25 New Fall Books You Have to Read This Season”
Lit Hub’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2020”
Fleabag meets Conversations with Friends in this brutally honest, observant, original novel about a woman going through a breakup…but really having more of a breakdown.
Jenny McLaine’s life is falling apart. Her friendships are flagging. Her body has failed her. She’s just lost her column at The Foof because she isn’t the fierce voice new feminism needs. Her ex has gotten together with another woman. And worst of all: Jenny’s mother is about to move in. Having left home at eighteen to remake herself as a self-sufficient millennial, Jenny is now in her thirties and nothing is as she thought it would be. Least of all adulthood.
Told in live-wire prose, texts, emails, script dialogue, and social media messages, Grown Ups is a neurotic dramedy of 21st-century manners for the digital age. It reckons with what it means to exist in a woman’s body: to sing and dance and work and mother and sparkle and equalize and not complain and be beautiful and love your imperfections and stay strong and show your vulnerability and bake and box…
But, despite our impossible expectations of women, Emma Jane Unsworth never lets Jenny off the hook. Jenny’s life is falling apart at her own hands and whether or not she has help from her mother or her friends, Jenny is the only one who will be able to pick up the pieces and learn how to, more or less, grow up. Or will she?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British writer Unsworth (Animals) delivers a blistering tragicomic send-up of a life documented on Instagram. For 30-something Jenny McLaine, social media doesn't come as naturally as it does to her younger colleagues at feminist website The Foof. Perhaps that's why she spends way too long at her East London coworking space agonizing over just the right filter, hashtag, and caption for a croissant post ("I've tweaked it so many times that I can't work out whether it makes sense anymore"). Real life starts to intrude on Jenny's online persona, however, when her romantic life, friendships, and financial footing all fall apart in quick succession and that's before Jenny's clairvoyant, busybody mother shows up and moves in. The broad satire with which Unsworth opens her novel quickly gains both substance and shadow, as Jenny's present-day predicaments alternate with scenes from the heady beginning and truly painful breakdown of a longtime romantic relationship. Emails, internet searches, online posts, and even a screenplay comprise the varied and playful forms through which Jenny's surprisingly poignant drama unfolds. Though directed squarely at millennials, Jenny's stumbling journey toward authenticity will resonate with anyone who's taken the bold, hard step of assessing their life without any filters.
