All We Ever Wanted Was Everything by Janelle Brown

Originally published in Time Out New York, May 22, 2008

With her fluffy debut, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, novelist Janelle Brown has created the literary equivalent of a Lifetime Original Movie. On the same day that her husband’s pharmaceutical company goes public, Silicon Valley housewife Janice Miller learns, via messengered letter, that he is leaving her. Not only has Paul been banging Janice’s best-friend-cum-tennis-partner, he’s also ensured that Janice won’t see a penny of his company’s newly acquired millions. Janice quickly unravels and resorts to scoring drugs from the pool boy in order to preserve her Stepford-wife persona. Unfortunately, daughters Margaret and Lizzie are too busy falling apart themselves—twentysomething Margaret is in debt and unemployed, while 14-year-old Lizzie has been sleeping with half of the freshman class—to notice Mom’s new meth addiction. Suburban dysfunction abounds. How, the novel poises itself to ask, will these women get their grooves back?

This setup could constitute a fun summer read in a more experienced author’s hands, but Brown’s prose is lazy and leaves too little to the imagination (“Margaret stands there blankly, her mouth hanging slightly open, as if she can’t quite understand what Lizzie has said”). She also relies too heavily on tired chick-lit reductiveness: All the men in the book are assholes who, as Margaret explains, “don’t know the clitoris from the clavicle.” Good thing women can stick together and bond over ice-cream sundaes, which is exactly what the Miller gals do at the end. Though peppered with a few comic moments, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything disappoints, even by beach standards. After reading it, you might feel inclined to throw it into the ocean.