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    Adult Onset
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    Adult Onset
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    Adult Onset
    Audiobook11 hours

    Adult Onset

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Mary Rose MacKinnon is a successful author of YA fiction doing a tour of duty as stay-at-home mom while her partner, Hilary, takes a turn focusing on her career. She tries valiantly to balance the (mostly) solo parenting of two young children with the relentless needs of her aging parents. But amid the hilarities of full-on domesticity arises a sense of dread. Do others notice the dents in the expensive refrigerator? How long will it take Mary Rose to realize that the car alarm that has been going off all morning is hers, and how on earth did her sharpest pair of scissors wind up in her toddler's hands?

    As frustrations mount, she experiences a flare-up of forgotten symptoms of a childhood illness that compel her to rethink her own upbringing and family history. Over the course of one outwardly ordinary week, Mary Rose's world threatens to unravel, and the specter of violence raises its head with dangerous implications for her and her children. With humor and unerring emotional accuracy, Adult Onset explores the pleasures and pressures of family bonds, powerful and yet so easily twisted and broken. Ann-Marie MacDonald has crafted a searing, terrifying, yet ultimately uplifting story.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 14, 2015
    ISBN9780147519528
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Adult Onset

    3.5/5

    88 ratings14 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I had the same problem with this book that I did with MacDonald's other two novels - I expected them to be better than they were. This was certainly well written, and I enjoyed the humor sprinkled throughout. I found much of the story relatable - as a mom, a daughter, a partner. I understood much of the darkness in the book, and thought it was quite realistic. The relationships, with their good and hard moments, felt authentic and true. I just wanted more from the story, and it ultimately didn't deliver. It was fine, but probably won't be one of the books I remember from 2015.
    • 4/5
      Mary Rose (MR - called Mister by her friends) is a stay-at-home author, watching her two young children while her wife is away directing a play. This novel (somewhat autobiographical) follows MR during the week that she is alone at home with her two children. MR carries around a lot of baggage. She has a complicated relationship with her mother - stemming from her mum's multiple pregnancy losses and the depression that followed. MR herself suffers from chronic pain in her arm - again related to possible abuse she suffered as a child. I could not warm to this character - she lives in her head and is constantly second guessing every thought, every action. Really, I found her to be about ten kinds of crazy and exhausting to be around.Ann-Marie MacDonald is one of my favourite authors. 'Fall on Your Knees' was brilliant and the second novel, 'The Way the Crow Flies' was even better for me. I love her writing style and her complex back stories. 'Adult Onset', however, is definitely my third favourite of her three books.
    • 4/5
      I have read Anne Marie Macdonalds "Fall on your knees" and "As the crow flies" and enjoyed them immensely. Adult onset is a very different type of book. She is a tremendously gifted writer because her prose is so lyrical and readable. This book is not for everyone. I can't say that I enjoyed it but I did appreciate the writing. The story is about Mary Rose Mackinnon, a very successful young adult author who spends a week alone in Toronto with her two young children while her wife Hilary is in Calgary directing a play. Mary Rose or Mr is a devoted but neurotic mother who worries about all the terrible things that could happen to her children, who are 2 and 5, while ensuring that they only eat organic foods and are safe at school and at home. She has flashbacks to her own childhood which has unresolved trauma related to bone cysts in her left arm which required multiple surgeries and now causes phantom pain. Did her post partum depressed mother physically abuse her? This question is the fundamental problem of the whole story and after a while it grows wearisome. Mary Rose is emotionally supported by a very loving wife, father, brother and friends. However, she fixates on her mother Dolly who seems to be slowly deteriorating mentally. Her relationship with Dolly has been rocky, especially when she comes out as a lesbian and her mother unloads a torrent of hatred.If you enjoy introspection and analysis of forgotten memories, you will like this book.
    • 4/5
      It is so refreshing to read a REALLY WELL WRITTEN book. Almost nothing about this story connects with me -- not the relationships, the motherhood, the parental issues, the obscured past or the troubled childhood. However, because this story was so well crafted, because the writing was stellar, I was drawn in and pulled along on its journey.

      Ann-Marie MacDonald's other two novels contain some difficult-to-read content. The content in this book is not lighter, but I did have an easier time reading it -- the book story is also much shorter. It is totally different but still brilliant. This is what I think of when I think of Canadian Literature: an unapologetic identity living life without tidy conclusions.

    • 4/5
      brilliant, I loved it.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the author's style - lots of funny moments throughout. The story itself was a bit bleak, but overall a good read. Great narrator for the audio book.
    • 3/5
      I am glad I don't live in Ann-Marie MacDonald's head. Although she writes well her books are so filled with childhood trauma and dysfunctional families that I find it hard to get through them. I suppose it must be cathartic for her to write these books (surely she is drawing upon her own experiences) it does not provide a release for this reader.Mary Rose MacKinnon is 48 years old, living in Toronto with her wife, Hilary, and raising two children. Four year old Matthew was adopted but two year old Maggie is Hilary's child conceived by artificial insemination. The book covers a week while Hilary is away in Calgary where she is directing "The Importance of Being Ernest" so Mary Rose (called Mister by close friends and family) is alone with the two children. She has pain in her left arm where she had several operations as a child for bone cysts. This pain causes her to revisit her childhood which was traumatic and not just because of the operations. Her mother lost a number of children both in utero and shortly after birth due to Rh factor problems. When MR was two a brother died a few days after birth. The mother sank into deep depression but she was also abusive to MR. She had similarily been raised in an abusive home. Now MR is afraid that she is going to continue the cycle of abuse.The book is not entirely dark; there are moments where I laughed, especially when MR and her mother, Dolly, interact. Yes, the same woman who abused MR is a funny and lovable senior and MR does love her. However, I think I could have happily lived my life without reading this book.
    • 4/5
      Crammed full of ideas, brilliant passages, humor, and desperation, this novel has back stories within stories, a novel within this novel. All so well written, but maybe, as was true for The Goldfinch, too much between two covers.Mary Rose and Hillary are married Canadians, with one adopted son and a biological daughter. As the novel opens, Hillary is headed west from their Toronto home to direct a play. Mary Rose, the lesser maternal-mom, is fending for herself, fairly unsuccessfully, with Matthew and Maggie, who is one of the most irksome (and accurately drawn) toddlers ever. As the hours crawl along, Mary Rose is sucked back into her own childhood, which was marred by a rare bone disorder which causes pain in her arm and traumatic surgeries in her youth. She is also expecting a visit from her most difficult elderly parents, who turned viciously on her when she first came out to them. And underlying all is are two childhood memories: her almost-plunge over a balcony and her mother's depression after a stillbirth.And Mary Rose, a successful author, is also being hounded by fans, who stop her in public to ask when the third book in her trilogy will be published. She hasn't even started writing it yet.All this combines to make one helluva harrowing week. And an almost equally stressful read! And yet, a memorable one, but not as brilliant as her earlier Fall On Your Knees and The Way The Crow Flies, both of which should be read first. Then decide if you want to tackle this one.
    • 3/5
      Adult Onset was a disappointment. Like many other readers, I was thrilled to get an advanced copy of one of my favorite author's newest book and couldn't wait to read it. It seems that it would be a perfect read for me; I related to its themes and I think about similar issues i.e. how past childhood trauma impacts parenting, I related to the characters in a myriad of ways and love family dramas. Yet, I could not engage with Mr. and the structure of the book often left me confused or restless and bored. Her relationship with her wife felt false and I couldn't understand their dynamics. Strengths of the book are Mr.'s coming-out story which was poignant and the pain of her parent's rejection reverberated throughout the book. I also warmed to her friends and the loving community she was able to create despite some of the ways that the character pushed them away. I thank Edelweiss for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book for an honest opinion
    • 5/5
      How reliable are our memories? How does our own childhood affect the way we parent our children? These are themes explored by this brilliant novel. It also explores parent-child relationships in a very deep way.Ann-Marie MacDonald is a wonderful writer. Fall on Your Knees remains one of the best books I've ever read. In Adult Onset, her ability to depict complex characters and the many facets of memory and perception makes this a strong story that will stay with me. As I read it, my understanding of each character deepened and shifted...well worth reading.
    • 3/5
      Mary Rose MacKinnon (nickname: 'Mister'), successful YA author in her late forties, has decided to put her career on hold and devote herself to raising her two young children, Maggie and Matthew. With her partner Hilary out of town directing a play, her days are hectic and often frantic. Complicating matters are an impending visit from her elderly parents, who seem more addled every time she talks to them, and a troubling and painful reminder of the rare disorder that afflicted her when she was a child and which required two major surgeries: bone cysts in her arm. This is the premise that Ann-Marie MacDonald sets up in Adult Onset, which takes place over seven days while Mary Rose struggles to maintain her equilibrium against increasingly desperate odds as the pressures of keeping the household running threaten to overwhelm her and childhood memories surface that force her to re-evaluate the first 48 years of her life. MacDonald immerses the reader in the minutae of Mary Rose's waking hours, to the extent that we seem to be reading a story that is told in real time, with every thought, gesture and action--important and trivial--recorded and commented upon. There is a great deal of flashback, as Mary Rose reviews and reconsiders her childhood and the various traumas that beset her and her family. The raw material may sound tedious (and easily could be in the hands of a less talented writer), but from start to finish MacDonald's prose is fresh, witty, irreverent, astoundingly observant and exquisitely detailed, so much so that the reader forgets that much of what occurs on the page is mundane in nature (preparing meals, walking the dog, picking Matthew up at school, etc.). In the end, Mary Rose arrives at a new interpretation of her past that may or may not have a basis in truth. The author takes her time reaching this point, and along the way the reader is treated to a great deal of angst. If this is a flaw it is easily forgiven because Mary Rose MacKinnon, demons and all, is an attractive and sympathetic protagonist whose story is always touching and entertaining.
    • 4/5
      I usually love Ann-Marie Macdonald's books but this one didn't impress me. The story takes place during one week when the main character MR (I really liked the nick-name) was the sole caregiver of her two children. She begins to have flashbacks of her own childhood and her own anger issues. I felt sorry for her mother Dolly because of the dead babies which affected her emotionally. The fact that her parents rejected her lesbian lifestyle also affected her deeply. Well written as usual but I didn't feel much empathy for the main character.
    • 4/5
      I loved Fall on Your Knees, and I keep hoping for another book by MacDonald that grips me the same way. Unfortunately Adult Onset did not do the trick. It was barely a 4 star read for me -- more 3 1/2. What I liked: the writing and the way MacDonald is able convey powerful emotions without explaining them; the depiction of Dolly and her incipient dementia which was pitch perfect; and the Toronto setting which for those of us who live in the neighbourhood really captured the feel of life in the area. What I didn't like (and maybe I am not being fair): It seemed too personal and close to self-indulgent; the issues of child abuse and the challenges of looking after young children are important issues, but they have been covered so often in fiction and non fiction that at times I felt myself getting a bit bored and wanting the story to move on. But ever hopeful, I will look forward to MacDonald's next book.
    • 4/5
      Mary Rose MacKinnon is a 48-year-old YA novelist, now a stay-at-home mother looking after two young children while her partner Hilary is away; she describes herself as “the middle-aged lesbian single-mother housewife” (73). The duration is one week during which time Mary Rose must cope with the loneliness, stress, and tedium of day-to-day single parenting. Her anxiety about her mothering skills, especially when caring for a stubborn two-year-old, lead her to examining her own mother’s parenting style. And recurring pain in an arm causes her to reflect on events from her childhood when she also experienced pain in that arm because of bone cysts.Though the novel covers a short period of time, virtually all of it in Mary Rose’s Toronto home, it explores a huge emotional landscape. Within that week, the protagonist experiences what could be described as an emotional unravelling. She is a very anxious person prone to panic attacks and always worrying about possible tragedies that could befall the children and her partner. She is especially concerned about whether she is a good parent; she knows she has moments of uncontrollable rage in which she fears harming herself or the children. In her tendency to anger, she sees her mother Dolly whom she remembers as often being depressed and unpredictable in her outbursts; Mary Rose agrees with her brother who says, “’We were raised with a lot of rage’” (68).One of Mary Rose’s difficulties as she starts sifting through childhood memories is that she isn’t always certain of what she actually remembers and what she remembers being told. A pivotal event she remembers, one in which her sister played a major role, is not part of her sister’s memories. As it becomes obvious that there is something unpleasant about her past, she turns away in fear though Hilary encourages her to take a direct look and face what is there. One of the themes is the influence of the past on the present. MacDonald examines what happens when people don’t confront the pain of the past. It manifests itself in unexpected ways: Hilary tells Mary Rose, “’You have your scars, you have your chronic pain, you have your broken heart’” (333) and “’I live with some of the results of how your mother dealt with her suffering’” (335). Rather than face a harsh truth, people tend to lie to themselves and make excuses; again, Hilary tells her partner, “’you’d justify [a cruel act] with how she suffered’” (335). And what if a harsh truth about the past can be known only partially; does one have to forgive what one does not remember (333)?Though not as memorable as Fall on Your Knees, this book is definitely worth a read. It conveys the frustrations and ennui of parenting in a very realistic way, and its focus on the importance of not suppressing the past should certainly give every reader pause to think.