“… calls to mind Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s wonderful Fleabag, although it’s a lot more prickly. … This is cringe-comedy at its finest, with Aubert’s wry observations cranking things up well beyond eleven. Venomous. Bitchy. Brilliant.”
Anne Cunningham, Irish Independent, Ireland

“[A] comic, painfully human story about what it means to be an adult when you don’t have a family of your own.”
Summer’s Best Reads, Vogue, UK

“An enchantingly funny novella which will ring uncomfortably true to anyone with a sibling or a tricky parental relationship … a fantastic debut … it has loads to talk about, is beautifully written and is short enough to read in an afternoon”
Best Book Club Books for 2021, The Independent, UK

“… explores the heartbreak and humour of family relationships … Aubert skilfully shifts sympathies between the sisters over and back throughout the book, which gives a dynamic quality to proceedings … we have plenty of humour offsetting the serious themes. Grown Ups wears its subject matter lightly … a succinct and thought-provoking exploration of the family unit and how it shapes individual lives.”
Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times, Ireland

“It’s easy to see why Grown Ups also attracted great plaudits from Norwegian critics … There’s an economy of language employed by Aubert in Ida’s internal monologue that echoes the likes of Sally Rooney and Naoise Dolan, along with a stream-of-consciousness sentence structure which is dizzyingly effective … Ida is a masterclass in how to write a self-centred protagonist … Don’t be fooled by its size – this is a sharp, timely novel with characters who linger.”
Andrea Cleary, Business Post, Ireland

“Frequently heartbreaking, occasionally caustic, always searingly honest, Grown Ups is one of the best novels about singleness, siblings and approaching middle age I’ve ever read”
Jan Carson, author of THE FIRE STARTERS

“A thoroughly enjoyable family character study set in the most perfect Norwegian lakeside cabin: pure escapism! An endearing, moving novel about family, fertility and finding your feet”
Emma Gannon, author of OLIVE

“An excoriating exploration into the psyche of [an] aspiring mother”
Susannah Dickey, author of TENNIS LESSONS

“Grown Ups is a beautiful, slim but powerful look at the complicated process of deciding whether to start a family, while navigating your existing family. The portrayal of the sister relationship is one of the best and most resonant I’ve ever read”
Nell Frizzell, author of THE PANIC YEARS

“A really sensitive and thoughtful evocation of a sibling relationship, a family relationship, and an experience that women go through regardless of what walk of life they’re living”
Hannah Westland, Radio 4 Open Book

“Grown Ups take a sharp, cool, and funny look at ageing, fertility, and family in all its forms. A perfect novel for a time when we’re all wondering who we are and what comes next.”
Jean Hannah Edelstein, author of THIS REALLY ISN’T ABOUT YOU

“Sharp, funny, very poignant, and full of smart observations about family dynamics”
Miranda Ward, author of ADRIFT

“Exploring the modern themes of dating apps and egg freezing, this is a real page turner with the impressive ability to be both hilarious and devastating”
Independent, UK

“Grown Ups tackles big themes with aplomb, weaving together blistering comedy, searing disappointment and close-to-the-bone commentary on family dysfunction, sibling rivalry and modern motherhood”
The Herald, Scotland

“My guess is that this novel will take the Swedish public by storm … Aubert efficiently exploits place and space to tie together past – the sisters’ childhood – and present and the family they have become today … What first seems to be a pleasant, short novel about a few Norwegian summer days develops into a quiet, almost thrillerish, family story that Aubert lightly and elegantly steers towards disaster”
Johanna Frid, Dagens Nyheter, Sweden

“A perfect little gem of 110 pages. With elegance and almost merciless clearsightedness, Aubert dissects a family and its internal relationships within the space of a few summer days … Marie Aubert has perfect pitch in her portrayal of forbidden emotions”
Aftonbladet, Sweden

“A sharp and intimate sibling drama of love, pain and growing up. Very Norwegian, and astonishingly good.”
Borås Tidning, Sweden (critics’ favourites)

“Marie Aubert isn’t afraid of tabooed subjects. She digs out the crude mechanisms for how siblings can treat each other … It all gets insufferable in Ida’s eyes. The desire to take revenge for the way Marthe steals the attention expresses itself in ways that are not beautiful, although perhaps human … Without ever getting pretentious or abstract, Aubert identifies the most acute details, the razor sharp cruelties that may be dressed up as friendliness or small-talk. Deeds that claim to be done out of care, but which are bursting with the desire to destroy … Along the way, the pressure has been rising as in a pressure chamber. Only when I close the book and breathe out do I realize how high the pressure has been”
Nya Wermlandstidningen, Sweden

“The pain of not being treated as an adult because you are single and childless is portrayed with great sensitivity in Marie Aubert’s first novel … But an unhealthy competition between two adult sisters, and in the family’s summer house to boot, haven’t we read this before? Yes, we have – the subject is so well-worn that it’s close to foolhardy of Marie Aubert to take it on. But that doesn’t stop her from succeeding. With small means, such as the insight that it can feel like a mental assault to be referred to the children’s room at the age of 40, while your sister occupies the master bedroom, or not being asked when the house you own is painted white instead of yellow … But Grown-ups is not a revenge book, so much as a “show-all-your-cards” book, where forbidden, shameful, cruel feelings pour out. And even if the book is narrated from Ida’s point of view, it doesn’t choose her side. The conflict stains both sides. It’s not a question of good vs evil, but rather fragile vs fragile. That’s the wonderful thing about Grown-ups, that it tightly, sensitively and without a lot of gesticulating deals with the difficulties of being a human being”
Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden

“Marie Aubert’s punch-in-the-stomach debut is an intense and utterly absorbing chamber play about the longing to have children and sibling jealousy, where the fury of each line tears into you like a nail against a chalkboard”
M Magasin, Sweden

“What makes Aubert’s stories about couples, dating or involuntary childlessness so good, is that she creates characters that feel believable and real in all their imperfection. It’s not the characters’ irrational actions, but it’s the way they rationalize and justify them afterwards, that is so shocking. It’s not the lies in themselves, but the fact that these conceited women themselves believing them, that is absurd. Herein lies also Aubert’s devilish, entertaining humour, which is all the more comic in contrast with the fundamental melancholy of these works.”
Information, Denmark [double review of Grown-ups and Can I Come Home with You]

“How can realistic everyday stories that only want to dig around in petty, ugly feelings be such a beautiful, light read? I kept sneaking away to read a little bit more about the ambivalently childless, jealous, unfaithful, abandoned, fickle characters of the Norwegian author Marie Aubert’s two works … This is prose that makes you hurt inside, but beautifully and subtly written … There is a nice calm, a steadiness, in Aubert’s patient but not mild focus on big emotions.”
Weekendavisen, Denmark [double review of Grown-ups and Can I Come Home with You]

“An outstanding novel … One of those books that take up little physical space, but still manages to tell a big, involving story … A really good, incisive story that in a beautiful way describes how an existential crisis can cause havoc in both the one living through it and her surroundings. Themes like family relationships, childlessness, powerlessness and jealousy are treated with great insight through more or less cringe-inducing inner and outer conversations. You can feel how absolutely natural the feelings that are unarticulated in these conversations. Even though they are hurtful, they are at the same time strangely cathartic”
Litteratursiden.dk

“Classic, slightly nasty and elegant … Ida is childless and without a partner, but with a successful career. While her little sister has a handsome man and is carrying a child, she has little to show for on other arenas. Everything is set for jealousy between siblings, black thoughts and desperate acts. Marie Aubert keeps it all on a tight leash, while the pot is bubbling. Et wonderful little chamber drama with a punch”
Turid Larsen, Dagsavisen, Books of the year 2019

“I gulped this one down like a delicious summer cocktail. Cringe TV in the form of a novel, and quite simply a devastatingly good novel”
Katrine Judit Urke, Dagbladet, Books of the year 2019

“In her first book from 2016, Marie Aubert showed that she masters the short story genre, and in her second book, Grown-ups, she shows that she is equally convincing as a novelist. The story takes place at a cabin during summer holiday – the perfect setting for a claustrophobic family drama. Sibling rivalry and old grudges are woven together with the existential crisis that the main character Ida is going through. Ida is 40 years old and single, and wonders whether she will have to have a child in order to live a good life. Already from the opening scene Aubert shows that she has a talent for comedy and that she knows how to do efficient storytelling. The novel is smart and well-composed, and the dialogues are so poignant that it’s often uncomfortable reading – like literary cringe comedy.”
Nomination jury statement, Young Readers’ Critics’ Prize 2019

“The single childless main character of “Grown-ups” finds hope in new medical methods, and has started”  the process of freezing eggs for future use, when she finds a suitable man. Her single-tracked mind says something very important about becoming a grown-up as a woman: At a certain point things are narrowed down, and except for the role as a mother or a wife, there are few positive social categories to step into. Aubert’s book is a small, pioneering work about being a single woman in our modern age.”
Klassekampen

“She writes effortlessly and freely about the most shameful subjects … The dialogues are elegant, as is her portrayal of the psychological interplay between the characters. The creeping unease, all the conflicts that complicate the relationships between people. Ida’s futile efforts to be loved”
5/6 stars, Dagbladet

“Marie Aubert’s second book is powerful stuff … A demonstration of the destructive power of jealousy and people almost boiling over behind their forced smiles. Marie Aubert has entered Norwegian literature to stay … a flawless work with a remarkable patience and ability to let the story play out in the smallest spaces. Grown-ups is a 141 pages long chamber play, which becomes terribly uncomfortable because it’s so recognizable and credible … Quietly and patiently rolling out the past and all the small and big movements in the cabin, Marie Aubert has created a minefield of a book. Everything can go wrong all the time, and there’s fine line between an explosion and a mild summer breeze rustling the curtains”
5/6 stars, BOK365

“Marie Aubert hits bull’s eye in her first novel, which deals with a dysfunctional family on a trip to their cabin … It’s a powerful summer chamber play … The novel balances elegantly between being suggestive and direct, between presence and absence, between childhood flashbacks and present time events in a prose that is sensuous and realistic … Marie Aubert used to be a talented writer, here her talent is on full display”
5/6 stars, Adresseavisen

“Marie Aubert has written the book you have to read this summer … Aubert can portray shame in ways that will make the reader, to her surprise, react with both joy and dread. That the author also throws a critical gaze on the fertility industry makes Grown-ups a highly topical novel … The portrait of Ida is radical and heart-breaking, and shows what it’s like to be tormented by inner demons”
Aftenposten

“The author’s prose is effortless and playful, and rich in well-written, realistic dialogue. This is probably what makes the text such a horrifying read, we jump and bounce from one miserable deed to the next … Impressive, efficient and elegant”
Dag og Tid

“Marie Aubert fulfills all expectations with an elegant, tailormade story of the pain of discovering that life has passed you by quietly … Both Cora Sandel and Torborg Nedreaas shows up on the retina while reading this ligh, elegant summer drama, which unfolds while some scratch their mosquito bites, and others see their life fall apart. This tension between trivial holiday coziness and existential crises is treated by the author with insight and wisdom and a great sense of timing”
Dagsavisen

“With the story set in the Norwegian archipelago, Marie Aubert’s powerful first novel portrays “grown-up life” with frankness, humour and poignancy … What Marie Aubert does is to find a language for a few paradoxical features of modern life that might seem insoluble … Aubert serves us precise descriptions of the popular dating arena of our time, Tinder, as well as depictions of life with small children seen from the outside. Even the novel’s title, ‘Grown-ups’, can stand as a clear ironic commentary on adulthood … very recognizable, and difficult to put down”
Subjekt.no

“The past few years it has become almost a tradition that a new Norwegian novel becomes a hot summer topic. This year there’s no doubt that Marie Aubert’s Grown-ups fills that role. The book gives a sharp and clammy portrait of how close family relations and bad behavioral patterns is an explosive combination – again and again”
Aftenposten – Culture Tip of the Week

“Aubert’s novel is great fun. The immaturity, or pathetic if you will, is emphasized by the fact that the two grown-up sisters are stomping around in their childhood paradise, the cabin. An intelligent 40-year old, Ida is of course highly conscious of her own shortcomings and self-pity … How long can you postpone having a child if you know you want one? And can you live a good life without one? Grown-ups is a painfully topical psychological portrait of growing desperation in the face of biological realities”
Morgenbladet

“A delight to read … The tender descriptions of a relationship between two sisters who are both close and distant, reminds one of Helga Flatland’s A Modern Family”
5/6 stars, Stavanger Aftenblad