“They tell you that you grow up, you get a job, you fall in love, you get married, you buy a home, you have children, you do all that, you get to be an adult. Like you want in this club? This is how you do it.”
For better or for worse, these lines from All Grown Up describe the path I ended up taking in life, thus making me a full fledged, bona fide, 100% adult.
And still, I could completely relate to Andrea, this novel’s awesome hilarious narrator, who didn’t take that path, and struggles with what being a grown up means when you’re almost 40 but haven’t checked off the traditional adulting milestones. Maybe all 40somethings feel like we’re kids playing dressup no matter what trappings of adulthood we’ve acquired, but I felt like this character was my alternate universe avatar. (I mean, she even makes a little jab at The Giving Tree, which has me half convinced that this novel was written just for me.) I am still laughing about the scene where she’s having trouble paying attention to her lunch date because the couple at the next table has “turned into a real thrill ride.” In fact, I laughed my ass off for most of this book, and then ended up crying my face off as well, so here I am with no ass and no face telling you to pick this one up immediately. What more do you need? Fine, I’ll just let Andrea sum up how I’m feeling about 50% of the time on a good day:
“I feel like a failure and a success at the same time because even though I have already fucked this up, I was probably supposed to anyway.”
Oh thank God it’s not just me.
