And everybody eventually has a breakdown. His daughter Alex rages, his son Gary disappears, his wife Barbara gets quiet, his daughter-in-law Twyla prays. His family reckons with this in different ways. It's really interesting, really readable, with people who are messy and barely keeping it together and I think it is probably a great fit for 99% of other people who love that kind of book.Īt the center of the book is Victor, on his deathbed, after he was a criminal, a bad husband, and a bad father. These are all topics I'm deeply interested in! And I found many of the characters incredibly compelling! It just never quite hit for me in that very specific subjective way that I hoped it would. 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 each family member grapples 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 tangle a family for generations and what it takes to-maybe, hopefully-break free. And Gary’s wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, buying up all the lipstick in drug stores 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. She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tightlipped mother, Barbra.Īs Barbra fends of Alex’s unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous life with Victor. Now that Victor is on his deathbed, Alex feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who he is and what he did over the course of his life and career. “If I know why he is the way he is then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am,” says Alex Tuchman, strong-headed lawyer, loving mother, and daughter of Victor Tuchman-a power-hungry real estate developer and, by all accounts, a bad man.
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