The complications of adulthood
ADULTS by Emma Jane Unsworth (Harpercollins, $33)
Jenny Mclaine is a 30-something journalist living her “best life” as a columnist for online women’s magazine, The Foof. She has her own home in central London, lives with handsome, tastefully tattooed up-and-coming photographer Art and knows just how to socialise in trendy Soho. So far, so good, right? Like all the best contemporary fiction, there’s a problem lurking and, in the case of Jenny, there’s a multitude of them.
Jenny’s addiction to social media fairly quickly started to irk and, the more I read, the more annoying it — and therefore she — became. But Unsworth is far too good a writer to portray her characters so one-dimensionally. As the story builds, we learn that to Jenny, social media is a way of punishing herself; a form of self-flagellation for misplaced grief.
She takes masochistic pleasure in deliberating over every word in her painfully considered Instagram posts; chain-smokes when she realises she could be considered a stalker for commenting on more than one post by the same person in any given day and single-handedly downs a bottle of merlot when Suzy Brambles unfollows her.
We are saved from too much of Jenny’s navel-gazing by Emma Jane Unsworth’s delightful, delicious humour; Adults is extremely funny: “I thought I’d offended [my editor] Mia on Friday when I told her UV uplighters for teeth were imbecilic, unaware that she was wearing one (I thought she was slurring on her anti-depressants) …”
Much to Jenny’s chagrin, her mother Carmen is a psychic who variously reads the tarot for friends, attempts at seeing their future and, for a fee, will dial up old friends. Unsworth’s humour helps us navigate some painful episodes in Jenny’s life. Without giving away too much, be assured Carmen’s unilateral decision to stay with Jenny after her flatmates move out and her best friend Kelly dumps her is an inspired plot twist. “I want to help. I see you’re not yourself … and I’ve enrolled on a course to train a as death doula.”
Unsworth writes with a quick conversational patter. She skilfully segues from the heart of the story to subplots, taking the reader with her as Jenny’s life unfolds, collapses and rekindles bit by bit. There’s a searingly truthful emotional resonance to Jenny’s various life traumas akin to such contemporary fiction masters as Marian Keyes and Maggie O’farrell. The book’s subtle ending — without the hasty retreats or clumsy conclusions that blight some novels in this genre — is satisfying.