There Are No Grown-Ups
A midlife coming-of-age story
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
*MUCH RAVED ABOUT BY CHRIS EVANS ON HIS BBC RADIO 2 BREAKFAST SHOW*
EVERYONE ELSE IS WINGING IT TOO.
You know you're a grown-up when...
·You become impatient while scrolling down to your year of birth.
· You’ve lost and gained the same 10lbs so many times you now regard it as an old friend.
· 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 know that 'Soul mate' isn't a pre-existing condition. It's earned over time.
Does it ever feel like everyone - except you - is a bona-fide adult? Do you wonder how real grown-ups get to be so mysteriously capable and wise? When she turns 40, Pamela Druckerman - author of the #1 Sunday Times bestseller French Children Don't Throw Food - wonders whether her mind will ever catch up with her face. 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.
There Are No Grown-Ups is a midlife coming-of-age story, a hilarious quest for wisdom, self-knowledge and the right pair of pants. It's a book for readers of all ages about - finally - becoming yourself
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Pamela Druckerman lives in Paris, has just turned 40, and is suddenly shocked to hear waiters greeting her with “madame”. The author of the bestseller French Children Don’t Throw Food navigates the mishaps of modern middle age with acerbic wit, wisdom, and self-deprecating anecdotes. Each charming chapter ends with a “you know you’re in your forties when…” list, and these digestifs helped us savour Druckerman’s guidance on being a femme libre, planning an unlikely ménage à trois, and finding your true calling.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Druckerman (Bringing Up B B ) tackles the subject of entering her 40s in this amusing essay collection, with all 25 chapters cleverly entitled "How to" (e.g., "How to Be Jung," "How to Have a Midlife Crisis"). Druckerman, who has lived in Paris for 12 years with her British journalist husband (and their three kids), opens by painting a colorful picture of her Miami childhood, where she was raised by positive-thinking, "incompatible" Jewish parents. She then shifts to life in France, including the chapter "How to Plan a M n ge a Trois" (originally in Marie Claire) about the threesome she gave her husband when he turned 40. Druckerman claims 40 is when Parisians began calling her madame instead of mademoiselle, and when she realized she could no longer sport a youthful wardrobe (blazers and navy blue are now de rigueur, say French fashion rules). Though Druckerman is diagnosed with and treated for cancer in the course of her story, her tone remains predominantly light ("You know you're in your forties when... you watch The Graduate, you identify with the parents"). Druckerman's vision of aging is far from sugarcoated, and by the witty book's end she's matured into her role as a grown-up, making the 40s seem not so awful after all.
