Whanganuilibrary.com
Syndetics cover image
Image from Syndetics

The grown ups / Robin Antalek.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2015]Copyright date: ©2015Edition: First editionDescription: 357, 16 pages ; 21 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780062302472
  • 0062302477
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Summary: Spanning over a decade, told in alternating voices, The Grown Ups explores the indelible bonds of friends and family and the connections that form between Sam, Suzie, and Bella as they navigate parents, siblings, and one another on the way to becoming who they really want to be when they grow up.
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Fiction Davis (Central) Library Fiction Collection Fiction Collection ANT 1 Available T00579350
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From the author of The Summer We Fell Apart, an evocative and emotionally resonant coming-of-age novel involving three friends that explores what it means to be happy, what it means to grow up, and how difficult it is to do both together.

The summer he's fifteen, Sam enjoys, for a few secret months, the unexpected attention of Suzie Epstein. For reasons Sam doesn't entirely understand, he and Suzie keep their budding relationship hidden from their close knit group of friends. But as the summer ends, Sam's world unexpectedly shatters twice: Suzie's parents are moving to a new city to save their marriage, and his own mother has suddenly left the house, leaving Sam's father alone to raise two sons.

Watching as her parents' marital troubles escalate, Suzie takes on the responsibility of raising her two younger brothers and plans an early escape to college and independence. Though she thinks of Sam, she deeply misses her closest friend Bella, but makes no attempt to reconnect, embarrassed by the destructive wake of her parents as they left the only place Suzie called home. Years later, a chance meeting with Sam's older brother will reunite her with both Sam and Bella--and force her to confront her past and her friends.

After losing Suzie, Bella finds her first real love in Sam. But Sam's inability to commit to her or even his own future eventually drives them apart. In contrast, Bella's old friend Suzie--and Sam's older brother, Michael--seem to have worked it all out, leaving Bella to wonder where she went wrong.

Spanning over a decade, told in alternating voices, The Grown Ups explores the indelible bonds between friends and family and the challenges that threaten to divide them.

"P.S. Insights, interviews & more ..."--Cover.

Spanning over a decade, told in alternating voices, The Grown Ups explores the indelible bonds of friends and family and the connections that form between Sam, Suzie, and Bella as they navigate parents, siblings, and one another on the way to becoming who they really want to be when they grow up.

5 11 89 109 111 115 168

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

For teenagers Sam Turner, Suzie Epstein, and Bella Spade, life in a New York suburb is a jumble of friendships and young crushes, complicated but retaining some innocence. This insulated world collapses in the aftermath of family break ups and the path to becoming grown-ups is suddenly more complex. Over the next decade, Suzie and Bella barrel through college and into relationships. Sam drifts about switching jobs, and they all reshape their ties to aging parents. Despite stumbles and losses, each finds a way to adulthood, sometimes aided and sometimes held back by their childhood bonds. VERDICT Like Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, Antalek's second novel (after The Summer We Fell Apart) is an engaging ensemble piece with revealing insights about friendships. A great choice for book clubs looking for new adult titles.-Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Book Review

Over a period of 15 years, a group of affluent teenagers grows up amid parental crises and misfortunes of their own making. In the summer of 1997 in Rye, New York, 15-year-old Sam looks through the box Suzie Epstein hands him. In it are photos, taken by Suzie's father, of all the mothers of the neighborhood, smiling, in swimsuits, perhaps conquests of Mr. Epstein, perhaps not. It's the summer of unraveling: The Epsteins, after public confrontations, move to suburban Boston to start anew, and Sam's mother simply leaves, abandoning Sam and his father to companionable bachelorhood. Despite their first-love-fueled fumblings, Sam and Suzie lose touch. Suzie, reeling from caring for her younger brothers once her father permanently decamps and her mother befriends a vodka bottle, cuts all ties with her humiliating past, hoping to escape to college early. Sam takes up with Suzie's best friend, Bella, a relationship that continues through college in an undefined, convenient pattern of long weekends and longer separations. When Bella's mother dies, they all return to Rye, to the pot fugue of Peter Chang's basement, and even Suzie returns, shockingly on the arm of Sam's older, medical-student brother. Sam is unstrung by Suzie and his brother's relationship, and, coupled with a failing GPA, this ushers in a decade of drifting for Sam, a disappointment to everyone, including Bella, who later sacrifices everything for a demanding poet. Antalek's narrative, split among Sam, Suzie and Bella, is disconnected from time and place (they are millennials though could be from any of the past four decades, there are so few details) so the focus rests entirely on their opaque emotional struggles, leaving neither plot not character to drive the story. The plot, like the protagonists themselves, wanders to adulthood in this middling coming-of-age tale. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Powered by Koha