Trivial Grievances

Book excerpt: An oddly optimistic, witty and insightful generation-defining book for a lost generation, the miserable millennials, from Bridie Jabour, opinion editor at Guardian Australia In 2019, Bridie Jabour wrote a piece for the Guardian about the malaise of millennials and how the painful, protracted end of their adolescence is finally hitting home. They're looking at their lives and thinking: 'Is this it? Have I chosen the right place to live, the right job, the right partner? Am I, perhaps, not as special as I thought?' The article went viral overnight and Bridie decided the time had come to write a book about her generation - those much-maligned millennials. After all, she reasoned, this generation is coming of age in a unique set of social and economic circumstances, including precarious work, delayed baby-making, rising singledom, a heating planet, loss of religion, increased unstable housing and, now, a pandemic. But despite her assumption that this generation of 31-year-olds is the most miserable ever, she discovered that wasn't the whole truth ... Forthright, funny, incisive and provocative, Trivial Grievances is truly a book for our times, and for every 20- or 30-something-year-old anxious about their place in the world.