All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

By: Janelle Brown

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman

A smart, comic page-turner about a Silicon Valley family in free fall over the course of one eventful summer from the author of Watch Me Disappear and Pretty Things

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.©2008 Janelle Brown; (P)2008 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

Praise for All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

“A withering Silicon Valley satire . . . From the ashes of their California dreams, the three [women] must learn to talk to each other instead of past each other, and build a new, slightly more realistic existence—but not without doses of revenge and hilarity. Brown's hip narrative reads like a sharp, contemporary twist on The Corrections.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A razor-sharp critique of the absurd expectations that, these days, have come to stand for ambition, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is wrenching, riveting, and still manages to be great fun. This is a wise, intimate chronicle of one family’s struggle to take off their masks and live in the place they most feared: the real, imperfect world.”—Meghan Daum, author of The Quality of Life Report

“Rarely does a first novelist write with such confidence and grace. All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is a marvelous book.”—Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

“Janelle Brown's beautiful debut explores the tiny fissures in our lives and what happens when those fissures erupt into chasms. Excruciatingly funny, unrelentingly painful—this extraordinary book gives us something only the best novels can: a glimpse of what it means to be human.”—Katherine Taylor, author of Rules for Saying Goodbye

good writing

This story was well written. I can appreciate that it's not "exciting" story. But she writes her characters so well, I think. I feel for each of them and I love that.

Excellent

I enjoyed every minute of this audiobook. Excellent characters and narrator. Can’t wait for the author’s next.

First Book and lack luster ending. Author gets way better.

I liked the overall story and how the family is individually and collectively depicted. Several tired left leaning tropes. This gets old. I read her more recent books and the author has has improved and writes well rounded endings.

ho hum

Started out with promise and then it just seemed to drag and drag. After that it just abruptly ended!

I came here after DEVOURING “Pretty Things”

You can definitely see how Ms. Brown has come into her own as a writer after listening to this after finishing “Pretty Things”.

I’m captivated by the intimate details in her prose and the way she keeps you entertained by hooking you into the characters.

I felt she thoroughly nailed the slippery slope of addiction and the agonizing process of quitting a substance “cold turkey.” I wasn’t expecting the drug angle at all when I started the book, and I felt like Ms. Brown dealt with the topic with an intimate and caring understanding, allowing us to sympathize with the character that suffered with addiction.

The narration was amazing! How one woman could pull off the entire book (all the characters!!) shows how truly talented and gifted Ms. Rebecca Lowman truly is!

What makes or breaks an audio book for me is the narration and unfortunately, the narration of “Watch me Disappear” couldn’t pull me in, but I’m glad I moved onto this book and really enjoyed the ride!