Review of Grown Ups: A Novel. By Emma Jane Unsworth. Scout Press. 352 pp. $27.
Jenny McLaine, the narrator and main character of Grown Ups, Emma Jane Unsworth’s third novel, is 35 years old. Her mother, an actress, medium, and psychic, is, well, a piece of work. Jenny’s relationship with Art Wilson, a photographer, hangs on “the procreation thing.” At times, she thinks Kelly, her best friend, is worse than her mother. Jenny’s job as a columnist for Foof, a feminist online magazine, is anything but secure because her boss, who wants “a roar from the lady jungle,” is bored stiff with her “vulnerability.”
Jenny knows she’s suffering from a social media malady. “The culture of constantly checking, of feeling that everything can be constantly sorted, and accounted for, and validated, and gratified,” she tells herself, “has to rub off on us psychically, doesn’t it? I’ll check, I’ll check, I’ll check. The weather, my thighs, my politics, my lunch. Erasing all mystery. But does it? Does it, really?”
Source: mikoto raw/Pexels Therapists, she suggests, should specialize in digital anxiety and establish social media rehabilitation centers.
Hilarious, heart-rending, and heart-warming, Grown Ups is a splendid satire of love and work in the time of (anti-) social media. Told through texts, tweets, emails, iPhone exchanges, unsent drafts, blogs, and script dialogue, the novel is a 21st-century guide to digital manners, mores, and manias, chock full of material for therapists to chew on.
Jenny is scared "Of being left behind. Of being not wanted. Of coming second. And the disappointing utter fucking childishness of that.” She fears that “the people you know best are the people you end up hating the most on social media. You see through the façade. Otherwise you just think ‘Oh there’s that fabulous person having a glorious time.’”
These emotions shape—and are shaped by—her experiences on social media. Jenny asks her boss how she spent the weekend. “I went for a meal,” Mia declares, “which I know you know because you liked other pictures around the same time mine went up, so why didn’t you like mine?” Realizing that Mia knows—and keeps—the score, Jenny replies, lamely, “I must have missed it.” “The truth is,” she tells us, “I like every fifth or sixth thing Mia posts—not always because I like them, but to sort of say hi and remind her of my existence. I don’t want to look rabid. I thought I was managing my affection well. Evidently not.”
Responding to a photo posted by Art and his new significant other, Jenny leaves a comment, “Looks devilish. With one emoji. A sane, simple yellow heart. Not as demanding as a red heart. Sort of more carefree.” She waits 10 minutes for a reply, deletes it, regrets deleting it, and wonders whether she can retype it quickly and put it back “or whether they will have noticed and see that I typed it twice. I don’t want to look unconfident or weird … I could always blame it on a bad connection.” She posts it again, looks at it, hates it. She notices that someone is staring at her from a nearby bench: “They look away quickly into their burrito.”
Carmen McLaine’s new boyfriend has 200,000 followers on Twitter, she announces. “But how many people is he following,” Jenny asks. Probably 299,000. “You can’t trust the follower count. It’s all about the ratio.” He’s only following 2,038 people, her mother reveals. “Ah, he’s probably one of those awful types who follows and then unfollows,” says Jenny. To which Carmen replies, along with the rest of us, “I need a manual for this.”
THE BASICSJenny is, at times, unstable, petulant, and self-absorbed. That said, what she wants out of life seems pretty normal: “Sometimes I think I want to walk down a school corridor in autumn time and see construction paper tacked to walls and recognize their inspiration … Other times I just want to be alone with my imagination. Mostly, though, I just want to not care what every single person thinks of me all the time, and I want to not have so many people’s opinions whirring round my brain, and I want to share my life with someone and not get bored, and I’m so scared that isn’t possible … And sometimes I just want to have a shower and put on a clean pair of jeans and eat a sandwich in a café and feel like a normal f*cking person.”
Makes you wonder whether she is beginning to think and act like a grown-up, whatever the hell that may mean.