All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg book review

 

All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg book review 

All this could be yours by Jami Attenberg so this is a literary fiction family saga sort of story. You are following this family where the patriarch basically of the family named Victor is on his deathbed. 

You're watching the different people in this family sort of grapple with that in different ways, particularly because Victor was a not great person. So there is his daughter Alex who flies out to where her parents are in New Orleans to be with-- by her mother's side. 

But also she's there because she wants to find things out about her father and her family, find out the truth about her parents. Specifically she wants to kind of understand why her mother even stayed with him in the first place. 

And then of course there is the mother Barbara who is working really hard to kind of ignore the questions that her daughter is berating her with, in her opinion, and just trying to deal with the situation at hand. 

And then Alex has a brother named Gary who lives in New Orleans but is currently in Los Angeles and isn't really wanting to return home to the family during this period of time. 

And then there's Gary's wife Twyla who is in New Orleans and she's having a bit of a breakdown. And you find out why in the story. 

So yes, anyone who saw my 10 year challenge tag saw that this was like the book that I wanted to read the most that like came out this year that I hadn't read yet. And so I finally read it and so I thought I would do a review on it. 

I really enjoyed this book overall. I think I gave it a four out of five stars. It's not my favorite Jami Attenberg book, I still loved all grown up a little bit more. 

But I feel like her writing in here has gotten a lot stronger. And I think the reasons why this one didn't buy as much with me as all grown-up did is mostly because of like that multi character point of view style that takes place in this book. 

But again just made it so I couldn't love this book as much as I wanted to. I think that if you are someone who enjoys family sagas, you will enjoy this one. Particularly family sagas where the family is extremely rich and well-off. 

But I think that the characters in this book also grapple with a lot of things that are really relatable, particularly the idea of kids trying to figure out who their parents really are. 

There's a number of things that are talked about in here about Victor, and you don't know exactly like all of the things that he's done but it's very much insinuated that he has done illegal business activities, potentially working with like the mob. 

They used to live on East Coast and I think he's originally from New York. And so there's like potential that he's connected to all of these very shady criminals. 

He's definitely cheated on his wife. And so I think it's very interesting to have the story sort of exploring what it's like to be a blood relation and a close blood relation to someone like that. 

You see Alex and Gary sort of grappling with their own responsibilities that they do and don't feel towards their parents, especially in a situation like this. 

And how the fact that they were not great parents really made a huge impact in the way that they chose to live their lives. And how Alex ended up becoming a lawyer and she works really hard to try to be a good mom to her daughter. 

But she also like is concerned that she's going to be a lot like her own parents. Gary basically like goes in kind of an opposite direction with his life but you also just see still like how his parents have influenced the choices that he's made and the way things are right now. 

But if I'm being completely honest, my favorite character in this story was Barbara, the wife. I think seeing how she rationalizes things and seeing why she made the choices she made including like why she chose to stay with her husband and the life that she's built for herself and all of that was like so fascinating to me. 

Because it's such a different like worldview and idea than I would like to ever choose from my own life. And so seeing the story from that point of view is super, super interesting. 

There are a couple of things in this book that kind of like, I don't wanna say they bothered me because that's like a little bit extreme, but I don't think that they were necessary. 

One of them is the fact that a lot of the story takes place in New Orleans which is where Jami Attenberg currently lives. 

She like tries to insert all of these New Orleans-based like characters into the story for just like either a couple of paragraphs or just like a quick switch a point of views. 

There's like one chapter that's told entirely from the perspective of a character who lives in New Orleans and it feels just like so unnecessary and so irrelevant to everything else happening in this story that I didn't enjoy those parts enough to like stick out in my mind as something to talk about.

Like this isn't a very long book and I don't think that those additions really added much. Although a lot of people who've reviewed this book and really loved it talked about how much they loved the way that Jami Attenberg talks about New Orleans. 

But I feel like that should have been just a whole 'nother separate story, maybe a collection of short stories or vignettes or like interconnected stories about New Orleans. 

Like that should have been its own separate thing and I would have just been happier with more stories about the family itself or more sort of information about their past or anything along those lines.

But one of my favorite things about this book is just like the writing itself like this was a book where there were just like these individual sentences or individual like paragraphs that just like really, really blew me away. 

I posted one of them on Instagram, like on my Instagram stories. And like I have a highlight thing on my Instagram profile full of like book quotes. So it's saved in there in case you guys want to like scroll through that, or tap through that I guess. 

But I think that like Jami Attenberg with each book is really like upping her game in terms of the actual writing itself, which is a really great thing to be watching and to be reading and to be experiencing. 

Like she has all of these really great observations on what it's like to be like growing up in the world today or just be existing in the world today that's really fantastic and I feel like that this book is kind of worth it just for those observations in and of itself. 

So like if you're someone who's a very like plot heavy person, this is not going to be a book for you. But if you are someone who likes those sort of like literary ruminations on life, then this would definitely be a book for you. 

But there aren't any sort of like big reveals or shocking moments in my opinion with this book. Again, plot seems very secondary to what this book is about and why this book is so enjoyable.

So like for me while I was reading this book, I was able to basically guess or assume a lot of the plot points that happen later on in the story. 

So if you're the type of person who that might bother you, then be forewarned for that. This book feels a little bit predictable in terms of plot. Maybe I've just read enough literary fiction books filled with drama that it's not too hard to see where things are going. 

But again, I think that the characters in here are really interesting in the way that they sort of struggle with and grapple with this difficult person in their life is really, really interesting. 

And I think that, again, if you're someone who enjoys the sort of like ruminations on life and death and family and stuff like that, Jami Attenberg has some really, really interesting ideas in here. 

So that is my review on all this could be yours. Let me know down in the comments below if you've read this book and what your thoughts were on it. 

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