All We Ever Wanted Was Everything: A Novel
by Janelle Brown
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Book Summary Information
Author: Janelle BrownEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-05-12
ISBN: 0385524021
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780385524025
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything: A Novel
Book Review: Not quite everything
Summary: 3 Stars
In All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, Janelle Brown introduces us to a family during their summer of one crisis after another. After 29 years of marriage, Janice Miller is stunned to learn, on the day her husband's Silicon Valley company makes a successful first stock offering, that he won't be coming home to celebrate their new wealth - he's leaving her for her best friend and tennis partner. Meanwhile, her elder daughter Margaret's finances are rapidly plummeting to the other end of the spectrum as her own business goes under, and teenage daughter Lizzie's social naivete is teaching her some hard lessons. Each of them is trying to cope with her problems in her own way, but none of their ways include much open communication with each other.
Brown alternates the focus of each chapter among the three women, and her use of third-person narration gives the reader some insight into each of their perceptions of each other - and these are characters who seem to relate to their perceptions of each other more than to the actual person. There's a lot of reaction to the perceptions of others within the book, really. On the surface, especially in Janice's case, it looks a bit like too much concern about "keeping up appearances," especially since their upscale community is the kind of place where appearances seem to matter greatly - however, sometimes when the inner turmoil is just too much to deal with, attention to appearances can give a person some small sense of control over something. (Voice of experience speaking here.)
I didn't really find much in All We Ever Wanted Was Everything that seemed particularly original. Sometimes it seemed to me that the author was piling every complication she could come up with on top of the characters, even though most of them did seem plausible under the circumstances. I frequently grew frustrated with the Millers' disinclination, even outright refusal, to be honest with each other. Then again, I think I was meant to react that way; miscommunication is frustrating, sometimes even more so when it doesn't involve you, because what the people in question should be doing can seem so obvious. Besides, these people were also struggling with being honest with themselves.
There were times when I had trouble liking the characters here, but I did think they were realistically drawn and developed, and they did end up engaging my sympathies. I was pulled into their story, and it made an emotional connection with me - I would have liked that connection to be just a bit deeper, though.
[...]
Summary of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything: A Novel
On the day Paul Miller?s pharmaceutical company goes public, he informs his wife, Janice, that their marriage is over and that the new fortune is his alone. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the Miller?s older daughter, Margaret, has been dumped by her hot actor boyfriend and is failing at her job, kind of spectacularly. Sliding toward bankruptcy, Margaret bails and heads for home, where her confused and lonesome teenage sister, Lizzie, is struggling with problems of her own: She?s become the school slut.From behind the walls of their Georgian colonial bunker, the Miller women wage battle with divorce lawyers, debt collectors, drug-dealing pool boys, evangelical neighbors, and country club ladies?and in the process all illusions and artifice fall away, forcing them to reckon with something far scarier and more consequential: their true selves.
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