Grow Up
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Review
The most convincing portrayal of the adolescent mind since Vernon God Little - Like Holden Caulfield on Mephedrone. --Ewan Morrison
Engaging, funny and sharply-written. I loved it. Somehow manages to be both brutally uncompromising and really warm-hearted. --Chris Killen
GROW UP is absolutely knockout - Brooks is blessed with a blinding grasp of terse, lyrical prose, and has the timing of a genius stand-up comic. Top class. --Richard Milward author of Apples
A new literary bomb. --Shame Jones author of Light Boxes
Ben Brooks is a magical imp who pumps out dark nuggets of poetry and makes you snort with laughter. --Noel Fielding
Sickeningly good. So confident, so stylish. An unacceptably witty and original debut. --Tim Key
In a world in which youth is fetishised as much as it is, Brooks revels in what everyone secretly knows -- namely, that teenagers are all, in some way or another, idiots. Jasper and his friends are as earnest as they are ironic, selfish, cruel, giddy and unthinking. Adults, he is confident, are clueless and easily manipulated ... although by the end he starts to twig that perhaps they are not as stupid as he would like to believe. --Times
This is a totally convincing portrait of being a wayward teenager now, that only a teenager could have written. It's so pertinent it actually kind of trips you out. It's pretty mental that Ben Brooks is any good now: imagine how good he could be by the time he actually does grow up. --Dazed & Confused
Brooks has an ability to show us the world through the eyes of a teenage boy and his fast-paced, expressive narration. Without all of this, we might feel as though we were being led down too many familiar paths; instead, our expectations are neatly subverted. --Scotsman
Engaging, funny and sharply-written. I loved it. Somehow manages to be both brutally uncompromising and really warm-hearted. --Chris Killen
GROW UP is absolutely knockout - Brooks is blessed with a blinding grasp of terse, lyrical prose, and has the timing of a genius stand-up comic. Top class. --Richard Milward author of Apples
A new literary bomb. --Shame Jones author of Light Boxes
Ben Brooks is a magical imp who pumps out dark nuggets of poetry and makes you snort with laughter. --Noel Fielding
Sickeningly good. So confident, so stylish. An unacceptably witty and original debut. --Tim Key
In a world in which youth is fetishised as much as it is, Brooks revels in what everyone secretly knows -- namely, that teenagers are all, in some way or another, idiots. Jasper and his friends are as earnest as they are ironic, selfish, cruel, giddy and unthinking. Adults, he is confident, are clueless and easily manipulated ... although by the end he starts to twig that perhaps they are not as stupid as he would like to believe. --Times
This is a totally convincing portrait of being a wayward teenager now, that only a teenager could have written. It's so pertinent it actually kind of trips you out. It's pretty mental that Ben Brooks is any good now: imagine how good he could be by the time he actually does grow up. --Dazed & Confused
Brooks has an ability to show us the world through the eyes of a teenage boy and his fast-paced, expressive narration. Without all of this, we might feel as though we were being led down too many familiar paths; instead, our expectations are neatly subverted. --Scotsman
Product Description
Who says youth is wasted on the young? Jasper wants to get on in the world, but life is distracting. He's got his A-levels to contend with, his mother pushing him to overachieve, weekly visits to his psychologist, come-downs, YouTube suicides and pregnant one-night-stands. And then there's his step-dad - the murderer. Hilarious and heartbreaking by turns, GROW UP is the ultimate twenty-first-century coming-of-age novel. It paints a vivid portrait of the pills and thrills and bellyaches of growing up today. Funny, smart and twisted, it is the story of one young man transformed.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Authentic, shocking & funny,
By
This review is from: Grow Up (Paperback)
This is the story of Jasper, a quirky, egotistical, frequently frustrated and even more frequently funny seventeen-year-old. He's by turns capricious, irritating, charming, scheming and even sweet. The author's 19, which shouldn't be relevant, I know, but somehow is, because this all feels horribly, but enticingly real, like you've actually opened up someone's diary and are in on every hope and fear going through their head. It's like a punked up version of Joe Dunthorne's SUBMARINE. And smacks of the kind of authenticity Skins would kill for. Looking forward to seeing what Brooks comes up with next. Something exciting and unexpected, I should think.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
DO YOU WANT NU-RAVE OR DO YOU WANT THE TRUTH?,
By
This review is from: Grow Up (Paperback)
Canongate seem to have a knack for publishing funny, intelligent, slightly hip novels - see 'Naive.Super' and 'The Bird Room', for example - and 'Grow Up' is definitely a continuation in this tradition.It's hard for any aspiring writer not to be jealous of Ben Brooks' credentials. He hasn't even reached his twentieth birthday and he has four books in print as well as a pushcart prize nomination to his name. But, as Raymond Carver wrote, "Ambition and a little luck are good things for a writer to have going for him. Too much ambition and bad luck, or no luck at all, can be killing. There has to be talent." And Brooks certainly has talent. Brooks had an early start managing to make a name for himself with his unique experimental fiction, which often had more in common with poetry than straight-up prose. He released three books in print on small presses in America and also saw his shorter work published in some reputable online journals. But 'Grow Up' sees a departure from this earlier style, producing a more accessible form. While still retaining the vivid sense in which Brooks' paints his world he also manages to bring forth a comic voice. In fact, it has been a long time since I have laughed so much while reading a novel. It has been said that 'Grow Up' is "full of sex and drugs", but, while many movies, TV shows and novels use sex and drugs as something to make their products "edgy" in an attempt to reach their "target audience", you can't help but feel that the sex and drugs within 'Grow Up' are a report from a lived experience, not included to make the book sell more copies or anything cynical like that but to give a realistic account of what life is like for teenagers, or at least Ben Brooks, growing up in the 21st century suburban England. Brooks writes, with honesty and tenderness, his unique way of how he sees the world. To refer back to the Carver essay that I quoted at the beginning of this review, "Some writers have a bunch of talent; I don't know any who are without it. But a unique and exact way of looking at things, and finding the right context for expressing that way of looking, that's something else."
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funny, true and downright brilliant.,
By
This review is from: Grow Up (Kindle Edition)
The cover of this book stood out to me way before I even got my Kindle for Christmas, so, when the time came that I got a Kindle, I had to read it first. The author immediately envelops you into the world of the protagonist without much hesitation, and I could not put it down until the last words (a real twist, if obvious, if you ask me, but hey-ho that's my only complaint) were on my screen.Ben Brooks, 19, offers a fantastic insight of what it is to be a teenager in the "Facebook Generation" (book references are the best) and what it is to be a confused, odd and imaginative adolescent in today's world. I can only thank Ben Brooks for a great read and hope there is more to come - he has quickly become one of my favourite authors. I have to recommend this book; not doing so has to be some kind of crime and a very bad thing - we must share this young talent and hope he becomes the author the protagonist wants to be. Five Star Book.
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