There Are No Grown-ups
A Midlife Coming-of-Age Story
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4.1 • 38 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The best-selling author of BRINGING UP BÉBÉ investigates life in her forties, and wonders whether her mind will ever catch up with her face.
When Pamela Druckerman turns 40, waiters start calling her "Madame," and she detects a new message in mens' gazes: I would sleep with her, but only if doing so required no effort whatsoever.
Yet forty isn't even technically middle-aged anymore. And there are upsides: After a lifetime of being clueless, Druckerman can finally grasp the subtext of conversations, maintain (somewhat) healthy relationships and spot narcissists before they ruin her life.
What are the modern forties? What do we know once we reach them? What makes someone a "grown-up" anyway? And why didn't anyone warn us that we'd get cellulite on our arms? Part frank memoir, part hilarious investigation of daily life, There Are No Grown-Ups diagnoses the in-between decade when...
• Everyone you meet looks a little bit familiar.
• You're matter-of-fact about chin hair.
• You can no longer wear anything ironically.
• There's at least one sport your doctor forbids you to play.
• You become impatient while scrolling down to your year of birth.
• Your parents have stopped trying to change you.
• You don't want to be with the cool people anymore; you want to be with your people.
• You realize that everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently.
• You know that it's ok if you don't like jazz.
Internationally best-selling author and New York Times contributor Pamela Druckerman leads us on a quest for wisdom, self-knowledge and the right pair of pants. A witty dispatch from the front lines of the forties, THERE ARE NO GROWN-UPS is a (midlife) coming-of-age story--and a book for anyone trying to find their place in the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Druckerman (Bringing Up B B ) tackles the subject of entering her 40s in this amusing essay collection, with all 25 chapters cleverly entitled "How to" (e.g., "How to Be Jung," "How to Have a Midlife Crisis"). Druckerman, who has lived in Paris for 12 years with her British journalist husband (and their three kids), opens by painting a colorful picture of her Miami childhood, where she was raised by positive-thinking, "incompatible" Jewish parents. She then shifts to life in France, including the chapter "How to Plan a M n ge a Trois" (originally in Marie Claire) about the threesome she gave her husband when he turned 40. Druckerman claims 40 is when Parisians began calling her madame instead of mademoiselle, and when she realized she could no longer sport a youthful wardrobe (blazers and navy blue are now de rigueur, say French fashion rules). Though Druckerman is diagnosed with and treated for cancer in the course of her story, her tone remains predominantly light ("You know you're in your forties when... you watch The Graduate, you identify with the parents"). Druckerman's vision of aging is far from sugarcoated, and by the witty book's end she's matured into her role as a grown-up, making the 40s seem not so awful after all.
Customer Reviews
A fun, relatable read
Great book full of anecdotes about the coming into your own that the 40s are all about. Highly recommend!