Author:Janelle Brown Binding: Hardcover Published: 2008-05-27 ISBN: 0385524013 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
"What a letdown"
"Are you kidding me?"
"I was drawn in"
"THIS IS ONE FINE READ"
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Editorial Review:
A smart, comic page-turner about a Silicon Valley family in free fall over the course of one eventful summer.
When Paul Miller's pharmaceutical company goes public, making his family IPO millionaires, his wife, Janice, is sure this is the windfall she's been waiting years for -- until she learns, via messengered letter, that her husband is divorcing her (for her tennis partner!) and cutting her out of the new fortune. Meanwhile, four hundred miles south in Los Angeles, the Millers' older daughter, Margaret, has been dumped by her newly famous actor boyfriend and left in the lurch by an investor who promised to revive her fledgling post-feminist magazine, Snatch. Sliding toward bankruptcy and dogged by creditors, she flees for home where her younger sister Lizzie, 14, is struggling with problems of her own. Formerly chubby, Lizzie has been enjoying her newfound popularity until some bathroom graffiti alerts her to the fact that she's become the school slut. The three Miller women retreat behind the walls of their Georgian colonial to wage battle with divorce lawyers, debt collectors, drug-dealing pool boys, mean girls, country club ladies, evangelical neighbors, their own demons, and each other, and in the process they become achingly sympathetic characters we can't help but root for, even as the world they live in epitomizes everything wrong with the American Dream. Exhilarating, addictive, and superbly accomplished, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything crackles with energy and intelligence and marks the debut of a knowing and very funny novelist, wise beyond her years.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
What a letdown Started off promising, got halfway through, gave up. Very cartoonish characters, the plot goes nowhere. I felt that Brown treats her characters with disdain. Waste not your money or time on this rubbish.
Are you kidding me? Publishers Weekly calls this a contemporary Corrections? J. Franzen must be ready to jump - because this is nothing more than a contemporary mass trade fiction book.
The writing is Ok, the plot twists are "Dynasty" like and the ending obvious and contrived. Two stars for being an extremely fast read.
I was drawn in Frankly, I didn't expect to like this book. I'm picky about novels, and this one didn't seem to promise much. How nice to be wrong! It was one of those books I carried around in my bag, sneaking a read whenever I could. I enjoyed the way the plot built, and I especially liked that I couldn't really tell which way the story was going to go. The characters felt visually and emotionally real -- I can relate to the reviewer who says she could imagine this as a movie. Nice juicy roles for three generations of... more info
THIS IS ONE FINE READ All we ever wanted was Everything by Janelle Brown is truly a rather amazing work and an absolute mesmerizing read. Now I will be the first to admit that this particular work will quite likely have more appeal to women than men; at first glance anyway, but due to the author's sheer story telling abilities I feel it will delight the male audience as well and they should give it a try.
Briefly, this is a rather satirical American story centering around three women, all in the same family, who are living... more info
