All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg

The cycle played out again here, this is a messy family drama that shifts perspectives, holds on to a few key reveals, and really asks about anger and forgiveness within families.

This doesn't mean she is a bad writer (she is an objectively good one!) but the way in which her books *should* work for me and then don't quite work for me fascinates me and I cannot figure it out.

Jami Attenberg is one of those novelists I am always curious about, because I read her books and I know they are good, but they never really connect with me on the level I want them to. As family members grapple with Victor’s history, they must figure out a way to move forward-with one another, for themselves, and for the sake of their children.Īll This Could Be Yours is a timely, piercing exploration of what it means to be caught in the web of a toxic man who abused his power it shows how those webs can entangle a family for generations, and what it takes to-maybe, hopefully-break free. With her signature “sparkling prose” ( Marie Claire ) and incisive wit, Jami Attenberg deftly explores one of the most important subjects of our age. And Gary’s wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, buying up all the lipstick in drugstores around New Orleans and bursting into crying fits. Meanwhile Gary, Alex’s brother, is incommunicado, trying to get his movie career off the ground in Los Angeles. (A power-hungry real estate developer, he is, by all accounts, a bad man.) She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tight-lipped mother, Barbra.Īs Barbra fends off Alex’s unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous life with Victor. Now that her father, Victor, is on his deathbed, Alex-a strong-headed lawyer, devoted mother, and loving sister-feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who Victor is and what he did over the course of his life and career. “If I know why they are the way they are, then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am,” says Alex Tuchman of her parents. From critically acclaimed New York Times best-selling author Jami Attenberg comes a novel of family think the drama of Big Little Lies set in the heat of a New Orleans summer.

All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg