How To Be A Grown-Up by Emma McLaughlin and Nicole Krauss

 

 

It took me a long time to read this book. Probably because I had trouble connecting with the main character, whose life is vastly different than my own. But, I kept returning to read some more because I wanted to know what was going to happen to her. Rory McGovern is a mother of two young children, living in the city, with an actor husband who is in the process of divorcing her. As the title implies, she finds she must do something to keep her life going. She has to be a grown-up. She takes a full-time job working for 20-somethings. It is demanding and disorienting, and those young professionals don’t always know what they are doing. Her kids are challenging, and her husband is exasperating. He wants her to pay alimony, then he makes it big, only to crash just as suddenly, and locks her our of her/their apartment. On top of all this, the business she works for is about to fold. Again, she decides to be a grown-up. I had to keep reading to see how she turned out. I’ll leave it as a cliffhanger.