Millennial pals convene at parties, drift apart in breezy, heartfelt and detail-driven novel

“This is how it works/You’re young until you’re not.”

That lyric comes from singer-songwriter Regina Spektor’s 2006 single On the Radio — a staple of millennial mid-aughts playlists, especially those compiled by skinny jean-clad hipster/indie millennials with Zooey Deschanel bangs or horn-rimmed glasses who lived in New York City (or desperately wished they did).

Back when “millennial” was a synonym for “young person.” Back when the 2008 crash had yet to thwart all our college dreams. Back when we could still be anything, anyone, and our choices didn’t feel locked in.

So it’s fitting, then, that this lyric should open American novelist Grant Ginder’s So Old, So Young, a funny, nostalgic and open-hearted look at multi-decade friendship and millennial middle age. (Yes, that’s right: the eldest millennials are deep into their 40s now.)

Ginder — who also wrote People We Hate At the Wedding, which was made into a 2022 romcom — is part of that cohort, with a 1983 birth year, making him roughly the same age as the friends at the centre of this story. It’s a familiar one: you meet people in college, bond over papers and beer pong, believe you’ll be friends forever, and then life, with all its seemingly compulsory milestones, starts getting in the way.

The novel takes a Four Weddings and a Funeral construction, except it includes a New Year’s Eve party, a wedding no one wants to be at, a beach-house birthday, a Halloween party in the ’burbs and, well, a funeral, spanning 2007 to 2024.

We begin in 2024 at Heathrow, where Mia Hoffmann is boarding a flight back to New York City. Someone from her college friend group has died, though the reader doesn’t yet know who. She scrolls her camera roll — was the last time they were really all together in 2019? — and starts to go down memory lane. (This is a novel with multiple points of view, but we spend a lot of time with Mia.)

Cut to 2007. It’s a New Year’s Eve party and we meet the novel’s main players: Mia and her best friend Sasha, a quintessential NYC gallerina, whose too-nice boyfriend Theo is giving her the ick. Elsewhere, romance is blossoming: Richie, the party-hardy host, gets together with sensitive, cautious Adam, and Mia with Richie’s handsome, serious roommate Marco.

By the 2014 wedding of Courtney Paulson — orbiting all college friend groups is an intolerable acquaintance who is always and forever referred to by first and last name — Mia and Marco have broken up, and Marco has brought his impressive (and, sadly, nice) girlfriend Emily. Richie’s commitment to partying like it’s 2007 has crossed into a worrying new territory, causing heartache for Adam; Sasha and Theo are off on their honeymoon.

And so begins the slow drift of friendship.

The novel switches breezily between the friends’ perspectives in a way that allows for plenty of new drama to be revealed. The device makes for gossipy fun, but it also hits on that age-old truth that the gulf between how we see ourselves and how other people see us can be as big as the Atlantic Ocean that Mia eventually puts between herself and her past.

Ginder situates these friends in a specific time and place with impeccable detail: the upside-down iPod in the red solo cup blasting Flo Rida at the New Year’s Eve party in 2007, for one vivid example, or Courtney Paulson’s circa-2014 Pinterest Mexican destination wedding, complete with a signature cocktail named after the groom (Geoff & Tonic) and instructions to “fiesta, siesta, repeat,” no doubt in the “live, laugh, love” script.

That level of detail extends to the life stuff the characters navigate. For Adam, it’s surrogacy (and impending fatherhood) with his partner, Rami; Mia, being childfree surrounded by babies; Richie, sobriety; and Sasha, the mental load of being a suburban mom with a secret.

It all makes this story feel real and true, and also makes it very easy to visualize the inevitable screen adaptation. The dialogue is so snappy and the sections, each with its own year and party, pre-fabbed into limited-series episodes. And all those needle drops. That’s not a criticism; it’s a fast, dishy read.

And if you were there — and are here, now — you will, to borrow a bit of millennial parlance, feel seen.

Jen Zoratti is a Free Press columnist and an elder millennial who was born in 1985.