A Most Anticipated title from: Buzzfeed * BookRiot * LitHub * The Millions * The Week * Good Housekeeping* KirkusA Best Fall Book Title from: Time * People * Entertainment Weekly * BBC * Buzzfeed * Refinery29 * Vogue * Vulture * Bustle * Cosmopolitan * New York Post * Nylon * Bust * Hello Giggles * USA Today * The Observer * PopSugar * Newsday * Woman’s Day * St. Louis Dispatch * Inside Hook * She Knows
“All This Could Be Yours is an engaging portrait of the unshakable connection of family.”—Vogue “Complicated families are Attenberg’s speciality, and she more than delivers on that premise here.”—Buzzfeed “Told from multiple perspectives, All This Could Be Yours illustrates the heartbreak, isolation and chaos that comes from really getting to know your family.”
—Time “Attenberg explores violence, corruption, infidelity and betrayal – with a satisfying set of consequences.”
—BBC “Versatile, earthbound, and unforgiving, the novelist returns to the comic blend of messy family drama that made The Middlesteins such a smart best seller. This time, the madness swirls around the (sort of) grown children of the dying Victor, a tyrannical and very shady real-estate developer.”
—Boris Kachka, Vulture “If you feed off of dysfunctional family drama that’s not your own, you’ll eat this up.”—Cosmopolitan
“All hail Jami Attenberg, the queen of dysfunctional families.”—Refinery29 “A richly drawn pleasure.”
—People Magazine “Nobody writes family drama quite like Jami Attenberg, and her latest novel is a dark, deliciously captivating look into the way a toxic patriarch can poison everyone around him. There are no easy resolutions offered here, but that's as it should be.”—Nylon “Juicy drama…Attenberg’s characters (family members as well as outsiders via clever cameos) are deftly developed, making for a fast but satisfying read.”
—Real Simple “It wouldn’t be a Jami Attenberg novel without a difficult family at its center. The New Orleans-set All This Could Be Yours spins secrets and resentments in its portrait of a strong-willed lawyer who returns home to contend with the legacy of her abusive, dying father.”—Entertainment Weekly “All This Could Be Yours…is glorious. It’s dark, sexy, mordant and the characters are deeply flawed yet relatable in that ‘drag me’ way. It’s set in New Orleans and while Jami’s writing is sparkling and lucid, the muggy heat of the backdrop lends an air of sultry wooziness that evokes day drinking and other amazing decisions. This book captures the intolerable loneliness and occasional futility of loving your family. All This Could Be Yours makes you want to call your mom, get salty when she doesn’t pick up and then let her call go to voicemail when she rings you back."
—Mary H.K. Choi, Bustle “We would read anything that Jami Attenberg writes. Anything. All This Could Be Yours is the best family drama you’ll read all year—and Attenberg’s best novel yet.”
—Hello Giggles “Jami Attenberg’s characters (family members as well as outsiders via clever cameos) are deftly developed, making for a fast but satisfying read.”—Real Simple, “The Best Books of 2019 (So Far)” “A deep dive into the darker side of family bonds, All This Could Be Yours is another compulsively readable novel by Jami Attenberg. In what feels like a rebuke to late capitalism, Attenberg refuses to find charm or redemption in the ugliness of greed. Her first book set in New Orleans, the novel casts a stark contrast between this family of outsiders and the native residents whose lives intersect with the Tuchmans. This is a parable for our times.”—The Observer “Contemporary family sagas don’t get much better than this novel, which should appeal to fans of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections or Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach.”
—Library Journal, starred review “Novelist Jami Attenberg writes fascinating, complicated characters, and All This Could Be Yours connects a villainous old man on his deathbed with others you’ll instantly care about. Despite the short time span, this story covers a lot of ground…a rich account of what folks have done, remembered, and regretted. Attenberg’s writing is funny and true, her observations bone-deep and nonjudgmental.”—Bust “In this darkly hilarious family drama, an abusive patriarch is on his deathbed in New Orleans, and his daughter is determined to mine her distant mother for secrets.”—NY Post “If you’re a fan of shows like Succession or even Arrested Development, looking at the fallout of a wealthy, toxic man and the family life he built, this novel is sure to thrill you. But really, anyone familiar with the ups and downs of family life will find something to relate to here.”
—SheKnows “Dazzling . . . A delectable family saga.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “The novel takes place in one very long day but encompasses the entirety of lifetimes…Prickly and unsentimental, but never quite hopeless, Attenberg, poet laureate of difficult families, captures the relentlessly lonely beauty of being alive. Not a gentle novel but a deeply tender one.” —Kirkus, starred review “Jami Attenberg always creates characters that feel so real you can almost touch them, and in All This Could Be Yours, she does it again. With their patriarch on his death bed, the family of Victor Tuchman gathers to say their goodbyes and figure out why he was the way he was. (And why they are the way they are.) Thoughtful and smart, All This Could Be Yours is a novel that begs to be discussed.”—Popsugar, “Best 2019 Fall Books for Women” “Attenberg writes with a deeply human understanding of her characters, and the fact that, when it comes to family, things are rarely well enough to leave alone.”—Booklist, starred review “Jami Attenberg hasn’t written a dull book yet…this book gets at some really deep, fundamental truths about family and forgiveness, and sees Attenberg possibly at her strongest yet, with each passing sentence as crisp and urgent as the next. This is another great work by one of our finest novelists.”
—Inside Hook “An ambitious and utterly delectable novel about families and their secrets that opens up, pleasurably, like a set of nesting dolls."
—Kelly Link, author of Get In Trouble “Jami Attenberg's work is so deeply attuned to humans and our imperfect attempts to love each other. All This Could Be Yours is populated by Attenberg's pitch-perfect characters; flawed, recognizable people dealing with big topics--death, family, sex, love--and Attenberg handles it all with an expert touch and a keen sense of what, despite all the sadness and secrets, keeps people connected, striving for moments of beauty and tenderness in a dark world.”—Emma Cline, author of The Girls “Set against the vivid backdrop of New Orleans, Jami Attenberg’s extraordinary new novel All This Could Be Yours is a deep dive into fractured family dynamics. In alternating voices, Attenberg expertly weaves together a chorus of love, betrayal and inheritance, each chapter a prism turned, revealing a new spectrum of secrets. Interspersed are gorgeous excavations into fleeting moments with strangers—the checkout clerks and ferry conductors passing through our lives—connecting this singular family into the larger web of life, where everyone is worthy of understanding and no one is without a soul.”—Hannah Tinti, author of The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley “Attenberg crafts families with stunning nuance and depth. She pays tribute to unseen New Orleans with a gaze on the powerful and the downtrodden. Her characters are unforgettable, their predicaments are captivating and their journeys shed light on the inner workings of America.”—Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of A Kind of Freedom “Jami Attenberg writes with an unflinching and generous spirit that brings to mind Grace Paley. All This Could Be Yours traces the lasting turmoil of a flawed marriage, and is another marvel of intelligence, humor, and soul.”—Zachary Lazar, author of Vengeance and Sway "No one understands the contradictions of the human heart and how our grace and our failures reverberate through our families better than Jami Attenberg. And no one writes about our grace and failures with humor and compassion better than her either. Also—this book’s structure is brilliant."—Attica Locke, author of Heaven, My Home “An engrossing story.”
—AARP, “Favorite Fiction Books for Fall” “Attenberg peels back the layers of each character until it feels like you have known this family your whole life.”—Alma, “Favorite Books for Fall”
★ 2019-07-28
After the brutish family patriarch has a heart attack, the surviving Tuchmans (mostly) gather at his deathbed, each of them struggling to make sense of their past—and come to terms with their present.
"He was an angry man, and he was an ugly man," the novel begins, "and he was tall, and he was pacing," and this is how we meet Victor Tuchman in the moments before he collapses. And so the family begins to assemble: Alex, his daughter, a newly divorced lawyer, arrives in New Orleans from the Chicago suburbs; his long-suffering wife, Barbra, tiny and stoic, is already there. His son, Gary, is very notably absent, but Gary's wife, Twyla—a family outlier, Southern and blonde—is in attendance, with her own family secrets. The novel takes place in one very long day but encompasses the entirety of lifetimes: Barbra's life before marrying Victor and the life they led after; Alex's unhappy Connecticut childhood and the growing gulf between her and her criminal father—irreconcilable, even in death. It encompasses Gary's earnest attempt to build a stable family life, to escape his family through Twyla, and Twyla's own search for meaning. Even the background characters have stories: the EMS worker who wants to move in with his girlfriend who doesn't love him; the CVS cashier leaving for school in Atlanta next year. The Tuchmans won't learn those stories, though, just as they won't learn each other's, even the shared ones. Victor is the force that brings them together but also the rift that divides them. Alex wants the truth about her father, and Barbra won't tell her; Gary wants the truth about his disintegrating marriage, and Twyla can't explain. Prickly and unsentimental, but never quite hopeless, Attenberg (All Grown Up, 2017, etc.), poet laureate of difficult families, captures the relentlessly lonely beauty of being alive.
Not a gentle novel but a deeply tender one.
Narrator Thérèse Plummer depicts every degree of anger, confusion, sorrow, and regret in this dramatic story of a dysfunctional family on the day of the death of the family patriarch. Listeners will be spellbound by Plummer’s impressive skill in evoking the unrelenting outpouring of emotion throughout this highly charged and fast-paced audiobook. She creates penetrating portrayals of each character— from the abusive father, Victor, and submissive mother, Barbra, to the snide, strong-willed daughter, Alex; the critical but absent son, Gary; and his nervous wife, Twyla. Frequent shifts in point of view, as well as illuminating flashbacks to earlier days, are masterfully conveyed by Plummer and help listeners piece together and appreciate this complex and absorbing narrative. M.J. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Narrator Thérèse Plummer depicts every degree of anger, confusion, sorrow, and regret in this dramatic story of a dysfunctional family on the day of the death of the family patriarch. Listeners will be spellbound by Plummer’s impressive skill in evoking the unrelenting outpouring of emotion throughout this highly charged and fast-paced audiobook. She creates penetrating portrayals of each character— from the abusive father, Victor, and submissive mother, Barbra, to the snide, strong-willed daughter, Alex; the critical but absent son, Gary; and his nervous wife, Twyla. Frequent shifts in point of view, as well as illuminating flashbacks to earlier days, are masterfully conveyed by Plummer and help listeners piece together and appreciate this complex and absorbing narrative. M.J. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine