Who can keep up with these super-successful twenty-somethings?
The ability to stay out all night partying is not why I envy the young. I’m mostly jealous because they’ve got so much time at their disposal in which to clinch their fate. Nobody really expects someone in their 20s to achieve fame and fortune (apart from Hollywood film stars). On the contrary, twenty-somethings are meant to flail around making a hash of things and living a bit hand-to-mouth. This is not only important for them, it also makes those of us in our 30s and above feel sorted.
So nothing upsets the applecart and – in my case – stokes age comparison anxiety more acutely than the ascendance of a supersuccessful twenty-something. While one is used to seeing screen starlets becoming multimillionaires overnight, literary sensations under the age of 28 have more of a wow-factor and, because I could never have been a film star but I do write, greater anxiety-producing powers. So when I heard that Daisy Johnson, 27, author of Everything Under, had become the last minute bookie’s favourite to win the Man Booker Prize last Tuesday, I panicked
and entered something of a slump (Anna Burns, 56, won it in the end, for Milkman). Johnson is 27 and has a Bookershortlisted novel under her belt. I’m 36 and… well, I don’t. I can barely remember the Greek myths; her book uses them to reimagine a mother-daughter relationship in modern Britain.
Publishing is producing a lot of successful young women. I am halfway through Normal People by Sally Rooney, another 27-year old literary sensation. Then there are the under-30 entrepreneur millionaires and the politicians; Ben Bradley is the 28-year old Conservative MP for Mansfield and Danielle Rowley, 28, is Labour MP for Midlothian. Both were elected at 27 – seemingly the magic age.
Of course, I don’t limit my anxious sideways glances to the young and successful; those my age with (seemingly) more to show for themselves make me uneasy too. And when I look at those only a few years older who seem to have it all sorted and then some, often with a healthy child or two thrown in, I really start to get sweatypalmed. I’m very happy for the pregnant Duchess of Sussex and the Duke, but I’d be lying if I said that her getting her ducks so firmly in a row at 37, just one year older than me, hasn’t given me the odd pang.