Briohny Doyle is a thirty-something millennial. The only daughter of a pair of middle-class, educated baby boomers, Doyle has a PhD but works as a greengrocer; she has a long-term partner, but they live in separate sharehouses. The questions about adulthood that plagued her in the lead-up to, and in the aftermath of, her thirtieth birthday form the foundation of Adult Fantasy. A Frankenstein-like investigation that incorporates memoir, ethnography, sociology and feminism, Adult Fantasy is an engrossing and enlightening read.

The book is organised around the perceived milestones of adulthood: education, marriage, babies, work, home ownership, and retirement, examining why we’re getting further away from attaining these milestones, and whether or not they’re even relevant in the twenty-first century. The research is meticulous and fascinating, arguing that ‘intergenerational sledging’ is really a scapegoat for the true social and political forces that are responsible for today’s twenty- and thirty-somethings’ bewildered trudge towards adulthood.

I loved this book. I found myself underlining so much of it that I thought I may as well give up annotating, lest I render it unreadable; often I found myself reading it on the tram and nodding vigorously in agreement. While this is partly because Doyle and I have a lot in common, including gender, age, and politics – not to mention mutual existential crises about university education and work, renting and ageing – Adult Fantasy, framed around Doyle’s own life and the great characters in it, is an absorbing mix of memoir and social critique for anyone curious about millennial ennui. I want to give this book to everyone I know, from my parents to high-schoolers, because it illustrates and explains just what it’s like to be a young person in Australia today.

Kelsey Oldham