Emily Giffin’s All We Ever Wanted may seem genetically engineered to please middle class mom book clubs, where symbolism and foreshadowing are eschewed in favor of white wine and local gossip, but there’s an astute heart beating beneath this suburban story. Nina is a salt-of-the-Earth-turned-upper-class-housewife who fills her days shopping and attending fundraisers while her silver-spoon-born husband writes checks and closes significant financial deals. Her seemingly perfect world is shattered when, thanks to the immediacy and omnipresence of social media, her golden boy son, Finch (a little too on-the-nose for me) sends around a picture taken of a partially exposed “scholarship girl from the wrong side of the tracks.” This picture throws Nina’s life into upheaval, dredging up her own repressed memories, and introduces us to her co-narrator and father of the victim, Tom, a hands-on single father/man’s man carpenter. The crux of the story is as subtle as a brick, but still interesting: Has this girl truly been assaulted, or was it a harmless bad joke? Should Finch get expelled and lose his acceptance to Yale, or is that too extreme? Is something that happened off school grounds the school’s responsibility?
This is where I’ll leave the remainder of the story to the author and share the Good and the Bad of All We Ever Wanted.
The Good:
-Its characters are self-aware: Is a cliché a cliché if it knows it’s a cliché? Every time I inhaled to gather the breath to scoff, Giffin beat me to it and I had to respect that.
Like when Nina considered smashing a piece of crystal in anger, but realized its futility:
In real life, though, I knew the satisfaction wouldn’t approach the effort required to clean it up.
Or when Tom cringed at his daughter’s role to play:
…it was just so predictable that the rich boy did the shitty thing to the poor girl, and I hated being part of the cliché.And even when Nina’s husband orchestrated a setting to bribe Tom:
He then gestured to a couple of arm chairs floating in the middle of the room. I had feeling they were freshly staged, and it gave me the creeps.
-The topic is timely: I’m not sure if this plot will age well, but for the current times, it could not be more apropos. We live in a society bombarded by the sharing of everything, big and small. For some, it’s desensitized us to the real horrors of the world and human nature, for others, it’s created Social Justice Warrior (SJW) who cry foul and demand retribution at the slightest provocation. Healthy probably lays somewhere in the middle, just as in this book.
-The writing is compelling: Love it or loathe it, the book is utterly addictive. Giffin’s writing is so smooth and nuanced, she turns throwaway dialogue and gestures into verbal minefields and carefully-concocted actions.
The Bad:
-Nina’s blink-and-you-miss-it personality change: While you do get a satisfying explanation as to why Nina is so immediately and urgently affected by the picture, and why her loyalty lies with the victim, not her son, her character’s motivations change so quickly you’ll get whiplash. She goes from being vaguely guilty about her charmed life to a crusader for justice who hates everything her lifestyle stands for. If the character development had happened gradually over a year or more, I’d be more forgiving. But as it was, this all happens within a week or so.
-Nothing really happens: I assumed the picture was more of a catalyst for things to come, but I was sadly mistaken. Maybe I’m one of the aforementioned desensitized masses, but the picture alone didn’t warrant an entire book in my opinion. I understand that it was the jumping off point to challenge Nina and Tom’s life choices, but I was underwhelmed at the limited scope of the story. It’s all tied up a bit too tidily and saccharine for my taste.
TL;DR: Readers searching for a meaty story to sink your literary teeth into need not apply. But if you’re looking for a compulsively readable beach book that’s heavy in social statements and family drama, but forgivably light in plot points, All We Ever Wanted may be all you ever wanted.
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