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: sheâs a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But itâs what she leaves unsaidâsheâs alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her fleshâthat 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 brotherâwho miraculously seems unscathed by their shared tumultuous childhoodâand 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 Andreaâs 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 Attenbergâs power as a storyteller, a whip-smart examination of one womanâs life, lived entirely on her own terms.