On the day that his company posts a record IPO, Paul Miller informs Janice, his wife of twenty-eight years, that he is leaving her. Overwhelmed by grief and anger, Janice hides in a drug induced haze of denial.
Margaret, Janice and Paul's eldest daughter, has not only been dumped by her fame craving actor boyfriend, but, thanks to losing on a risky financial gamble, has also free fallen into bankruptcy.
Lizzie, Janice and Paul's youngest, and somewhat neglected, daughter attempts to get the attention she thinks she wants by engaging in promiscuous activity at school.
Hunkered down in the Miller home, Janice, Margaret, and Lizzie are in for a long and painful summer of self-discovery.
Lucky for me, Janelle Brown's debut novel All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is not a long and painful read. But it is a long and soapy one. So soapy, in fact, that I began to think I could clean my hands simply by holding the book in them.
The positive reviews that I have read for the novel refer to it as a satire. While I found sections of the book humorous, they were few and far between. For satire to work, I think, the read must have some knowledge of what is being satirized. I know precious little about the lifestyle of the Santa Rita, California ultra-wealthy (and, for once, I am very happy that I am ignorant of such a shallow, trite, and mean-spirited way of life as the one described in this book) so a great deal of the humor was lost on me. The only portion of the novel that I related to, being a recovering Evangelical Christian, were the moments involving Lizzie's attempt at finding friends and kindly authority figures at an Evangelical church. That was a spot on bit of satire.
The book was also very well written, with strong characterizations and a plot that kept moving and kept me wondering what would happen next, and how bad would it be. That was enough to keep me from disliking the book, and there was a lot in it for me to dislike.
I have had enough personal experience with chemical dependency to know that Janice is given way too easy of an out from her addiction. That Brown looks away from Janice's withdrawals when she decides to kick her drug of choice, rather than give her soon to be ex husband a legal upper hand, simply adds insult to a narrative injury.
Having been bankrupt, I also lost my struggle to care one bit about Margaret's self-induced financial plight. I also spent far too much time around hypocritical and self-absorbed "feminist" types like her while attending San Francisco State University to ever want anything more than for her to stop feeling so goddamn sorry for herself, stop resenting her parents (and hating her mother) for living a lifestyle that she did approve of, and to just grow the fuck up, already. "Pardon my French."
At least Lizzie, being fourteen and lacking a strong authority figure to help her with her adolescent problems, has a suitable excuse or acting like an immature brat. She is one!
Now if all of these characters struggles went somewhere meaningful, the book would be far better than the moderately entertaining, albeit very readable, diversion that it is. But they do not. Salvation comes at the last minute, via a deus ex machina, and no personal growth or serious re-evaluation of lifestyle or life choices occurs. At least none that truly satisfied me. There were hints, but I wanted something more than the Three Millers getting through a difficult summer with their insanely huge portion of the family fortune intact.
Happy, happy, joy, joy.
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