'I pictured myself a wine-dark streak in a TV desert, ears too full of the summer wind to hear that ominous ticking in the sky: the sound of a cultural clock counting me out of youth.'Briohny Doyle turned thirty without a clear idea of what her adult life should look like. The world she lived in, with its global economic uncertainty, political conservatism, and precarious employment conditions, didn't match the one her parents grew up in. Every day she read editorials about how her millennial cohort—dubbed the 'Peter Pan generation'—were reluctant to embrace the traditional markers of adulthood: a stable job, a house in the suburbs, a nuclear family. But do these emblems of maturity mean the same thing today as they did thirty years ago? In a smart and spirited enquiry, Doyle examines whether millennials are redefining what it means to be an adult today. Blending personal essay and cultural critique, she ventures into the big claims of philosophy and the...

What could drive a mother to do the unthinkable? Before: Emma Cormac married into a perfect life but now she's barely coping. Inside a brand new, palatial home, her three young children need more than she can give. Clem, a wilful four year old, is intent on mimicking her grandmother; the formidable matriarch Pat Cormac. Arthur is almost three and still won't speak. At least baby Robbie is perfect. He's the future of the family. So why can't Emma hold him without wanting to scream? Beyond their gleaming windows, a lake vista is evaporating. The birds have mostly disappeared, too. All over Shorehaven, the Cormac family buys up land to develop into cheap housing for people they openly scorn. After: The summers have grown even fiercer and the Cormac name doesn't mean what it used to. Arthur has taken it abroad, far from a family unable to understand him. Clem is a young artist who turns obsessively to the same dark subject. Pat doesn't even know what...