She questions her desires, trying to come to terms with her status as an aging middle woman. Intermittently, Andrea sees a therapist, with whom she discusses her lack of desire when it comes to forming long-lasting relationships. Despite keeping in touch, Andrea keeps a distance, not wanting to take in their sadness. She calls her brother David once a week, who has married Greta and moved to New Hampshire after Greta's magazine folded and they could not keep up with the medical bills for Sigrid, their daughter who was born with a fatal heart disease. Her attempts to add furniture to the apartment run into trouble when her mother tries to give her the chair her father died in. She finds a cheap apartment in Brooklyn with a good view of the Empire State building that eventually is removed due to construction of a building, prompting her to move into a smaller, more expensive apartment in Manhattan so she could have a view of the iconic building. Stunted by a lack of ambition, Andrea takes the first opportunity she gets when Greta arranges for a job as an art director at an advertising agency. She spends time with her brother and his girlfriend, Greta, who works for a fashion magazine, until she can sort herself out. This prompts Andrea to lose complete confidence in herself, and she spends a few weeks in Chicago with her friend Matthew, another artist, until she goes back to New York.

They become close but the mentor eventually loses her patience with Andrea, telling her to quit. The parties stopped afterwards.Īfter attending Hunter College in the city, Andrea relocates to Chicago for art school, where she begins to shadow a famous artist, Felicia, in the hopes of learning something about Felicia's art and winning her acceptance. During one of those parties, Andrea was sexually molested by a man with goatee, and he attempted to rape her. After the father's death, her brother moved out and Andrea's mother attempted to keep the family going by hosting parties where people paid for food. She grew up poor on the Upper West Side in a rent-stabilized apartment, with a mother who worked for non-profits and a father who was a part-time jazz player but also a drug addict who died of a heroin overdose. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.Īndrea Bern, a 39-year old single woman and native New Yorker, has a host of personal issues that she refuses to confront.

This guide was made with the following version of this book: Attenberg, Jami.

All grown up attenberg