BKMT READING GUIDES
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
by Janelle Brown
Hardcover : 416 pages
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1 member has read this book
Introduction
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. et amid the country club gossip and rampant affluenza of Silicon Valley's nouveau riche, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is a smart, acerbic comedy chronicling one eventful summer when the lives of the Miller family are turned upside-down. After his pharmaceutical company's explosive IPO, Paul Miller leaves his wife Janice for her tennis partner, attempting to cut her out of nearly a half-billion dollars. Eldest daughter Margaret is on the run from her creditors after her fledgling post-feminist magazine Snatch implodes; and neglected Lizzie, a naïve teen enjoying a newfound popularity with boys at school, discovers that she’s actually 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.et amid the country club gossip and rampant affluenza of Silicon Valley's nouveau riche, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is a smart, acerbic comedy chronicling one eventful summer when the lives of the Miller family are turned upside-down. After his pharmaceutical company's explosive IPO, Paul Miller leaves his wife Janice for her tennis partner, attempting to cut her out of nearly a half-billion dollars. Eldest daughter Margaret is on the run from her creditors after her fledgling post-feminist magazine Snatch implodes; and neglected Lizzie, a naïve teen enjoying a newfound popularity with boys at school, discovers that she’s actually 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.
Excerpt
JUNE IN SANTA RITA is perfect, just perfect. The sun sits high in the sky -- which is itself just the right shade of unpolluted powder blue -- and the temperature averages a mild eighty-three. It isn't too hot to play tennis. Silk doesn't stick. The pool at the club is just cool enough so that swimming is refreshing, and the summer fog that usually creeps in off the ocean is held at bay, its gray tentacles undulating just off the shore. ...
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Discussion Questions
Discuss the epigraph by J. M. Barrie and its meaning in thenovel. How are the notions of failure, success, and personal
fulfillment examined in the book and are they complicated by
the expectations of family, culture, and society?
This novel is centered on three very different women. Explore
the concepts of femininity and feminism in the novel and the
ways in which Janice, Margaret, and Lizzie reinforce and challenge
those models.
Location plays an important part in the novel, magnifying and
thwarting characters’ aspirations. Examine the setting in this
novel. What do Santa Rita, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and
California itself symbolize? Could this story take place anywhere
else?
In the first chapter, Janice dreams of buying a piece of art with
her new fortune—“she covets a Van Gogh, one like those she
saw a few years back. The violence of the paint applied in furious
layers so thick that she could see the impressions of the
artist’s fingers, clawing at the canvas—she felt like she’d been
slapped. The color! As vivid as a hallucination.” Is this object of
desire an obvious one for Janice? What can we glean about
Janice from her choice of a Van Gogh, in particular?
After he requests a divorce, Paul tells Janice, “You don’t need
me. You’ve never needed anyone in your life.” Do you find there
is truth in Paul’s statement? Does Janice come across as completely
self-reliant or hopelessly dependent? Or is Paul projecting
his own feelings onto her, trying to justify leaving the marriage?
At the beginning of the novel, Janice and Margaret seem to
be antagonists. Does this remain the case throughout the
story?
By the end of the novel, do Janice and Margaret merely
understand each other, or have they grown more alike?
At first glance, Bart seems like an odd choice for Margaret’s
affection. Why does she fall for him and how does she reconcile
her love with her neo-feminist principles?
The Miller women cope with their predicaments through
various means—the accumulation of material objects, money,
drugs, religion, ambition, and sex. How effective are these
ultimately and what do they have in common?
After an unsuccessful and desperate attempt to score it,
Janice races to the hospital to meet Margaret and Lizzie,
who has just been released from the emergency room.
The text reads, “For the first time in longer than she can
recall, [Janice] feels happy.” In many ways, this
is such a low moment; explain what the
author means.
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
is a satire. What or who is the
object of the author’s critique?
Some early readers likened the
novel to the film American Beauty. Do
you see a similarity between the two
works? What is Janelle Brown’s message
to her readers?
Notes From the Author to the Bookclub
Dear Reader: I grew up in Silicon Valley, in a town that has since become the most expensive zip code in America. It's where the Google billionaires now build their mansions and where Larry Ellison keeps his Japanese compound. For a decade post-college, I wrote about Silicon Valley and San Francisco, the rise of the Internet and the dot-com boom; but I was always more interested in the culture of this area, the way the rapidly changing milieu was effecting the human stories inside it, impacting the fabric of personal relationships. This is where the story of the Miller family came from. We live in an age in which our measures of success -- whether boggling riches, Internet fame, overnight celebrity -- have been so totally distorted that it's almost impossible to define the term anymore, let alone "measure up." Each of the Miller women - Janice, Margaret, and Lizzie - have come to realize that they have fallen short of some invisible (and unattainable) mark. Intead, they hide their failures from themselves, from each other, from the outside world. I hope that ALL WE EVER WANTED IS EVERYTHING is food for thought - as well as being a fast-paced and entertaining read. JanelleBook Club Recommendations
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