Jordyn Stinar
Sad Grownups: A Review
Amy Stuber’s debut collection, Sad Grownups, features seventeen short stories that traverse adulthood and explore the turbulent emotions that surface through growing up and growing older. The characters in these stories range from teens just entering adulthood to adults in the last quarter of their lives, all grappling with grief, love and connection, and aging in a constantly growing and changing atmosphere. They are beautifully written, believable as human beings and, at times, heartbreakingly relatable in their flaws and desires. I found myself laughing with these characters and feeling for them all the same. They balance one another out with their individuality and unique motivations, yet in a collection with such distinctive characters staged in various settings, Stuber seamlessly shows that we are not alone; really, we are inextricably linked.
Sad Grownups begins with “Day Hike,” which revolves around a queer couple deciding whether or not they want to have children. Alice and Renee reflect on themselves and their relationship, as they walk a long trail together. Both women had decided “they were with the wrong people (men) and that being together after that would somehow lead to a better life. [Except] It hasn’t worked out that way.” This statement, laced with the subtle humor that Stuber incorporates within each of her stories in this collection, is a refreshing reflection in which both Alice and Renee believed they knew why they were unhappy and changed that singluar thing, but it did not change who they are as people in their relationship; they still have to work together to figure that part out. Alternating with Alice and Renee’s narrative is a perspective from their author as she struggles to write the two characters’ story. There is an interesting shift from the third person point of view of Alice and Renee to the first person point of view, making readers aware of the author’s presence. The language provides clues of this presence in Alice and Renee’s section as well with the opening lines being “Alice wants to walk on the trail, but Renee wants to wander. At least, that’s what I imagine.” Stuber is exceptionally talented at creating a voice outside of a story, giving it a meta aspect and making us think about fiction as it compares to reality. She does this again in “Dead Animals,” beginning the story with “Take me on a journey. Make me feel something. Surprise me. Make me change. Okay. Okay,” creating the illusion that the narrator is responding to prompts given to them in order to tell the story. This voice guides readers without telling them what to feel. The unique use of point of view allows the chance to look outside ourselves and reflect.
One of the most striking aspects of Sad Grownups is its emphasis on relationships. Many of the characters struggle with feelings of isolation and their want for, and lack of, human connection in the face of change and the inevitability of aging. A number of the stories, such as “Doctor Visit” or “More Fun in the New World,” have characters engaging in physical relationships or having sex, however it is the non-sexual relationships that feel more intimate. In “Cinema,” we follow a movie theater employee mourning the loss of her children. Stuber crafts an immersive setting as she surrounds a lonely, grieving woman with stories of love, seemingly fulfilled and contented strangers, and groups of children trick-or-treating on Halloween night. We find the main character in a time when the theater is showing a romance film, and as she watches a couple who have brought their baby to the movie, she begins to imagine her sons speaking to her. She looks for them in the groups of kids trick or treating, and when she doesn’t see them thinks, “Maybe wanting it made it not happen. Maybe expecting it was the problem.” At closing time, the woman crosses paths with a stranger who asks to close and walk with her. She begrudgingly gives in to her loneliness and agrees. The two begin to understand each other over a very short time, and give one another the company they were both lacking. Stories like “Cinema” and “Last Summer,” in which a dying professor befriends a couple of college girls, among others in the collection, show us how human connection, even when it is new or awkward or short-lived, can be more heartfelt and intense than physical closeness. These sad grownups are afraid to interact or connect with people and the world around them, sometimes going through great lengths to disguise their effort or desire for connection. But when they allow themselves to be vulnerable, the results are significantly better than expected.
As adults we don’t often refer to ourselves as “grownups” unless we are talking to children. In a collection that deals with heavy material and adult characters, it is ironic to see this phrasing. It suggests that adults can still relate to their child selves and even act as children. There are moments in the collection when adults relate to children, reflect on memories of their younger selves, or behave like children. In “More Fun in the New World” a mother and daughter go on a road trip after losing their husband and father who killed himself. The daughter is grieving, but also realizes she is angry at her father for choosing not to live. In Las Vegas, at a pool on the twenty-fifth floor and far away from the real world down below, they meet and befriend a man and his grandson. After swimming, talking, then falling asleep, the daughter wakes from a nap next to the boy who tells her “the adults” have gone off to a party. As the boy and the girl return to his suite, his grandfather and her mother, both drunk, walk to a bedroom and shut the door. The kids then also move to a bedroom. Afterwards, the girl runs away from both him and her mother and thinks, “I am suddenly nothing but angry at my parents, those giant loping children, all need and ineptitude and no restraint.” The stories make us wonder: Do we ever really grow up? To what extent are parents responsible for their children growing up to also be sad grownups? Stuber creates a web of melancholic narratives that also give us hope—the stories do not judge, rather, they present their conflicts as a part of life. They suggest that it is not unusual to grieve, feel confused, make mistakes, grow old, and grow up.
Stuber’s dynamic cast of characters also questions whether or not they matter as they battle with their place in the world and their relationships with those around them. We find this in sixty-year-old Heather, the protagonist of “Camp Heather” who works at a religious camp for boys. As she juggles her job and imagines what her future might look like, she thinks she “wants to wake up each morning thinking it matters.” We see it in the narrator of “Doctor Visit” as the protagonist contemplates the death of family members and her relationships with her doctors. She imagines several versions of her family’s death, and, after the first one, observes that “This is something I think about: mattering. As in, do we matter? It’s a masturbatory thought exercise that undoes itself, as in, the sheer act of thinking about mattering is enough to remind you of the futility of your actions and thus proof you don’t, in fact, matter, and why should mattering matter anyway?” In the final short story, “The Last Summer” prickly Adam Zanger contemplates his life and death. Told he has only months left of his life, despite being rather young at fifty years old, he reflects on how he has seemingly done very little with his time. He makes unlikely friends with two sorority girls, Carson and Lane, who are moving into the upstairs apartment of the house he lives in. The trio goes for a ride in Carson’s boat and as Adam stares up at the sky, he thinks of the shift we all go through from childhood to adulthood. How we may go from needing our parents to needing the desire of strangers. He considers how we go through life just thinking of the unknown, saying, “So much of life is about possibility, about what is next, what place what person what food, will this or that thing disappoint your family, will you travel, will you fuck someone, what are you going to buy, what time to sleep and wake up and what job and not job and what time this and that and that and then how suddenly, all of it simply, quite simply, doesn’t matter.” In a more lighthearted moment Adam claims he’d like to teach classes on these feelings, sarcastically giving us titles such as “‘living alone for a decade: making it work’ or ‘dying: nobody wants to, but here we go.’” The question of whether or not we matter seamlessly slips into each story, because it might be the most important question of all. Or maybe it is actually the least important.
“The Last Summer” is the perfect full circle conclusion to a collection that comically, devastatingly, and beautifully, provides us with perspectives on aging, grief, finding purpose, and coping with the expectations and demands of adulthood. As Adam addresses his feelings about his life and death, he grieves himself and what, and who, he will leave behind. In his short interaction with the girls his life changes and he begins to view the moments he has left in a different light. The story closes the collection movingly with this: “They sing, and it fills the car with lovely noise. The lights are a beautiful blur alongside their speeding. If he closes his eyes, it is always nighttime and summer. He can never not think of this.”