There Are No Grown-ups: A Midlife Coming-of-Age Story
Pamela Druckerman
1 ratings • 1 reviews
There Are No Grown-ups: A Midlife Coming-of-Age Story
Pamela Druckerman
1 ratings • 1 reviews
The best-selling author of Bringing Up Bebe 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 disturbing 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 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, and 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.
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ah, hello winter break. when you start a book in the am and are done by 8pm... hah girl knows how to party. i picked up this book because i just loved bringing up bébé so much. pamela druckerman is an expat in paris raising three kids and her perspective is so interesting.
this book was about your 40s and the crises that come with that. the topic was not exactly something geared towards me as i am a little over half way to 40. but i find her writing style and the certain ideas she presents interesting. each chapter covered a different topic, such as friendship, style, aging gracefully, and more. aging never seemed particularly appealing to me, and i went through phases in this book of dreading it even more to finally realizing that it is ok (but also thinking about how silly it is that we have the time to even worry about things like that)
i especially like the sections where she talks about being a good listener/observer, it is so important to be able to pick up how people feel or get certain impressions from situations and i think in america that is not something we are conditioned to do. i also did not know much about her husband and found his upbringing and the way he functions interesting (pretty much super educated and well read people who lived all over growing up, but who spend a lot of time analyzing situations and information to interpret what is really going on), and obviously all her remarks and parallels of the french and french living get me every time (there's so many things that i have seen over time but am never able to articulate as fully as she does)
i did skip over a couple chapters i thought were kind of inappropriate and i just didn't want to read, and certain sections of the book could have been a little bit shorter. i would be interested to reread this book when i'm closer to the target audience age and see how much differently i would perceive it.
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