And Then We Grew Up

On Creativity, Potential, and the Imperfect Art of Adulthood

By: Rachel Friedman

Narrated by: Jennifer Rubins, Rachel Friedman

One of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2019

A journey through the many ways to live an artistic life—from the flashy and famous to the quiet and steady—full of unexpected insights about creativity and contentment, from the author of The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost.

Rachel Friedman was a serious violist as a kid. She quit music in college but never stopped fantasizing about what her life might be like if she had never put down her bow. Years later, a freelance writer in New York, she again finds herself struggling with her fantasy of an artist’s life versus its much more complicated reality. In search of answers, she decides to track down her childhood friends from Interlochen, a prestigious arts camp she attended, full of aspiring actors, artists, dancers, and musicians, to find out how their early creative ambitions have translated into adult careers, relationships, and identities.

Rachel’s conversations with these men and women spark nuanced revelations about creativity and being an artist: that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, that success isn’t always linear, that sometimes it’s okay to quit. And Then We Grew Up is for anyone who has given up a childhood dream and wondered “what-if?”, for those who have aspired to do what they love and had doubts along the way, and for all whose careers fall somewhere between emerging and established. Warm, whip-smart, and insightful, it offers inspiration for finding creative fulfillment wherever we end up in life.

Very relatable stories and narrator

This was a really easy and healing read. Narrator’s voice is soothing and easy to empathize with as well as funny. Whether or not you have been in the arts, we can all relate to experiencing what the writer has been through.

Loved it!

It resonated with how I feel about my life journey! So many nuggets of wisdom.

Poor choice of narrator

The book was interesting enough that I listened all the way through despite the monotonous, relentless perkiness of the narrator. Her perkiness was appropriate neither to the overall subject of the book nor to individual passages. I recommend reading this one rather than listening to it. The book is well worth reading for young people considering pursuing the life of an artist or older people wondering why they didn't.

Read me

This is an absolutely fantastic book. This is not a how to book. This is not telling you how to get your groove back, it’s not telling you how to fail forward, it’s not telling you that you’re just missing your potential and if you worked just a little bit harder, you’ll make it. What this book does do is deal with reality And it helps you to deal with reality along the way and if you are tired, like I am tired of everyone telling you that you need to be perfect all the time. Then this is the book you want to read.

Toxic, privileged ideas about creativity

I bought this book to listen to on a cross-country trip to a university where I am to begin a tenure-track job in the arts. I was hoping for an honest, open-hearted discussion of the challenges and sacrifices one makes to pursue a creative career, something to put the past two decades or so of my life into a greater perspective. That said, it was not what I expected, and I actually couldn't finish the book.

The author was at her best when she was oriented outward, actually talking to her former campmates about their life experiences and creative struggles. However, it seemed for every minute of that, we were treated to five minutes of the author projecting her own insecurities, trying to psychoanalyze her former friends, and pontificating generally. (Though I did like her deconstruction of the "10,000 hour rule" and other myths.) She has an almost pathological preoccupation with "greatness" and "potential", taken to toxic extremes--that I find personally antithetical to a creative practice. (Incidentally, these are the exact kind of attitudes that were omnipresent, used as almost a currency in art school, and now I try to gently disabuse in my students who are more serious about pursuing the arts).

While the author did a good job acknowledging it, I couldn't get over just how privileged she and her peers were/are to have had the opportunities to attend Interlochen. I can't really fault her for this, since she does acknowledge it right in the introduction. I guess I was just hoping for a more nuanced discussion of the creative life, with different perspectives beyond this rarefied group. We do hear about the scholarship kids at Interlochen, but only as reminders of just how lucky the author is. Again, can't fault her, as her stated project was to dig up former Interlochen kids and see where they were now. (Where did the scholarship kids end up? As of halfway through, when I stopped listening, they were not a large part of the book).

It's altogether possible that if I stuck with the book, she would have been able to interrogate her own toxic assumptions and privilege as well as acknowledge other paths into fulfilling creative lives, but I couldn't make it past the chapter "On Failure," It was the perpetuation of so many more toxic ideas about creativity and life generally. I didn't think there was any real wisdom in the book for a person like me.

The narration was fine, though I found her overemphasizing many words in a single sentence in an at-times unnatural, overly performative way. There was a male character whose impression I found hard to listen to, it was like my sister doing an impression of her husband when she's mad at him or making a joke.