The story exposes a realization, here in the form of a female character who has expended her youth without consummation of her appetite to see herself as an artist. In discounting herself first, she avoided anyone else from shattering her self-image as an artist. And so this is the leaven from which grows her fermentation. In a story line about an ostensively adrift soul disconnected from her own senses, almost unable to innervate even in her most despondent states, the reader finds within this void a connection to our Andrea. She's in all of us: that tragic child in disbelief that life has unfurled so little of what was long ago blissfully expected and unpreparedly let go.
Hence, this book could not have been more aptly titled. You should - and will - deeply appreciate the experience of reading this book if you're All Grown Up, which I consider to be middlescence: that point in your life you find yourself standing in distilled recognition of the orbit of our futility and frailty in all its simplicity that comes with being. The amount of time each of us takes to reach that point generally occurs somewhere near your forties but everyone's mileage may vary depending on intersections, and the degree of intensity or severity therefrom, with family, envy, fortune, love, death, evil and good.
This book is especially associable therapy for those abiding in or around their forties. Therapy because Attenberg places her hand on your shoulder and nods understandingly in revealing to you that there is no unfound secret you somehow missed in life. The interplay between Andrea and herself during her therapy sessions is Attenberg's weaving art within art, as Andrea offers us our own remedy through her musings.
The author knows her craft. She draws you in from the very first word. It's estimable when authors can lure you in without effort within the first sentence; here, Attenberg handily does it with the very first word, "You're." The reader becomes and is the narrator, tottering, swaying, yawing, weltering through life that is purposely laid out hazily on the pages through bleary memories. All through the present tense, except for present-day recollections and infrequent divulgement of the future and past, the reader lives through the prose as they are presented and ingested throughout loose alternations through time only as it's relevant in the weighty events in our character Andrea's life.
Attenberg's writing reminds me a bit of Elizabeth Strout's, not in style but in that elusive gift to tap into a reader's ego and turn you inside out, leaving you torn up yet a little more healed to face life by the last page.
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Top reviews from other countries
TripFiction
All the shtick of metropolitan Manhattan, NEW YORK
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2017
TripFiction
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2017
Her life is spread eagled across the pages for the reader to pick over. Each chapter is a snapshot of an episode in her life, whether it is looking back over some of her chaotic childhood years – Dad was a drug user who died too early; Mum, once on her own again, runs bi-monthly dinner parties in the 1990s attended by only men, who of course try and hit on Andrea, a teenager at the time; or whether it is an examination of her relationships with her friends, lovers and acquaintances who pass through her life now.
Her Mother thinks marriage is “a beautiful idea” but Andrea is clear that it is not an institution for her. Her best friend and yoga teacher Indigo has had a baby, lives in a lovely loft apartment but Andrea’s bristling distaste of the set-up is palpable on the page. And that is what this author does really well, she can write, she can conjure up atmospheres, feelings and responses, and she can describe the desolation of someone who is ploughing their way through life, pitted against adversity and against societal “norms”.
Andrea also has a brother who in turn has a daughter, only tiny, who was born with a congenital problem and her life expectancy is only around four years. Yet, our self absorbed protagonist (there! I said it at last! Andrea is very much part of single life in the cityof the ‘me’ culture) does not really visit to offer support because she is so wrapped up in her own world. She simply does not have the resources to offer a worthwhile helping hand to others. She is anxiously attached to her Mother (not surprising given her childhood experiences), and she can’t bear that her Mother abandons her in the city, yet conversely longs to have a better relationship with her. She often finds herself spurning the intimacy of others offering the hand of friendship.
This is an interesting read, on-point in many ways – it smacks of New York and of lives lived in the city, Freudian Angst, neuroses and all the shtick of metropolitan Manhattan. But I think I would only really like to encounter Andrea on a future occasion once she has regrouped and worked once more with her therapist (who was fired halfway through the narrative) and addressed her growling anger (which must be draining for her, but is also draining, sapping, for the reader too). Towards the end of the book, however, without giving away any spoilers, there seems to be some honing of her sharp and dissonant character, so there is hope of a more accepting and less angry person in the next chapter of her life. Her existence in many ways is portrayed as ‘bitter and edgy” and at times feels rather soulless. It’s all very depressingly 21st Century….
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Gemma Green
Page-turningly readable, full of relatable experiences, great storytelling
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 28, 2019
Melancholie
Ultimately, an unfulfilling read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 25, 2020
