All Grown Up review: Self-absorption and the city

There's a scene in All Grown Up, American author Jami Attenberg's newest novel, where Andrea, a failed and emotionally stunted artist, describes paintings she discovered in an art gallery in Chelsea. The paintings, as she tells her friend, were "rough and beautiful", and made by a man who lived on a farm in Louisiana. His subject matter was the swamps, and Andrea, still struggling with her decision to abandon art college in her 20s, expresses amazement that this man can find inspiration in what she considers banal and ugly.

In another scene, Andrea and her mother stop at a gas station, where she spies “a teenage girl grudgingly mopping a handicapped stall”. Of course she was doing it “grudgingly” – has anyone ever mopped passionately? My heart went out to that teenage girl, worthy only of a single sentence, because, in the company of Andrea, my heart had to go somewhere.

It's never clear if Attenberg is deliberately portraying Andrea as unlikable, and it's reductive to dismiss a female character for that reason

Andrea Bern is in her late 30s, lives in New York and works in advertising, occupying an unfulfilling and unspecified graphic design job that she loathes. In a series of overlapping vignettes, closer to linked short stories than a novel, Andrea's brittle life is charted as she progresses through her 20s and 30s. Moving apartments, drinking, dating, pining for a career that never transpired – but never, ever settling down. Andrea values her freedom, and somewhere along the line, "freedom" has become synonymous with complete lack of care or any responsibility. She faces her first real adult crisis when her brother's child is born with a fatal illness. Will this compel Andrea to move forward? Will she start recognising other people as human beings? When her mother moves out to the country to help with the child, Andrea thinks, 'I'm the sick baby. Me.' If All Grown Up is meant to be a depiction of a comedic, and slightly kooky, single woman, then it's unintentionally grotesque and horrifying.

Deep narcissism

It’s never clear if Attenberg is deliberately portraying Andrea as unlikable, and it’s reductive to dismiss a female character for that reason, but as much as I wanted to understand her, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to congratulate her on her “courage”, I didn’t want to celebrate her “doing it all on her own terms”. I didn’t want to toast to this lifestyle. Andrea is so deeply narcissistic, and exhibits such a shameful lack of self-knowledge, that human connection is impossible not only in her romantic relationships but within her friendships and her family. She justifies not reaching out to her brother and his wife as their child slowly dies, saying, “I have found myself resisting their sadness when I have so much of my own”. When her sister-in-law returns to the city, Andrea is incapable of demonstrating even the most basic human kindness in the face of tragedy. Instead, she notes, with some satisfaction, that Greta has put on weight. Throughout, attractiveness is used as a stick with which to beat other women.

Books are not lessons in morality, and I’ve enjoyed characters far worse, but these books were not sold with stylish covers that promised “This behaviour is recognisable to us all!” I don’t find it relatable. With friends like these, we don’t need enemies.

Who’s it for?

So who is All Grown Up for? We're inundated with these voices – wry, urbane, unattached, like we're all permanently in line at the salad bar in Whole Foods. These fictional women roam across the cityscape like CGI reincarnations of Nora Ephron and Lorrie Moore: unreal, shallower, lacking their heroes' compassion, style and, most importantly, ability to write a genuinely good gag. Somewhere along the way, we all got confused and decided the only women who are allowed to be funny, difficult and scathing about their circumstances are women like Andrea: well-educated, often well-paid city dwellers. But being single is no longer considered revolutionary, and I've grown weary of this old joke. We've been slipping and sliding on the same banana peel for the last two decades.

If this is pitched as a true-to-life account of a 21st-century woman, then where exactly are these women to be found?

All Grown Up is not necessarily a let-down. It's originally structured and clever, and the scenes between Andrea and her father are touching. Attenberg is a good writer and she delivers good sentences. But we've heard it before. And we will hear it again. If this is pitched as a true-to-life account of a 21st-century woman, then where exactly are these women to be found? They live only in cities but the city itself is a dangerous illusion. It functions like a luxury hotel. At the top, surface layer, there are the women such as Andrea but, behind the scenes, there are the women mixing her drinks, doing her laundry and changing her sheets after her regrettable one-night stands. Where are their small tragedies and personal triumphs attractively packaged in paperback? Why are we being repeatedly told the same story is "new" and "brave"? All Grown Up may appeal to many women. For me, it only made a strong argument in favour of the swamp. It may be murky but at least it has depth.