All This Could Be Yours

(Hardback, Large Print Edition)

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Description

From critically acclaimed New York Times best-selling author Jami Attenberg comes a novel of family secrets: think the drama of Big Little Lies set in the heat of a New Orleans summer

"If I know why they are the way they are, then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am," says Alex Tuchman of her parents. Now that her father is on his deathbed, Alex--a strong-headed lawyer, devoted mother, and loving sister--feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who Victor is and what he did over the course of his life and career. (A power-hungry real estate developer, he is, by all accounts, a bad man.) She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tightlipped mother, Barbra.

As Barbra fends off Alex's unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous life with Victor. Meanwhile Gary, Alex's brother, is incommunicado, trying to get his movie career off the ground in Los Angeles. And Gary's wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, buying up all the lipstick in drug stores around New Orleans and bursting into crying fits. Dysfunction is at its peak. As each family member grapples with Victor's history, they must figure out a way to move forward--with one another, for themselves, and for the sake of their children.

ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS is a timely, piercing exploration of what it means to be caught in the web of a toxic man who abused his power; it shows how those webs can tangle a family for generations and what it takes to--maybe, hopefully--break free. With her signature "sparkling prose" (Marie Claire) and incisive wit, Jami Attenberg deftly explores one of the most important subjects of our age.

Reviews

A Most Anticipated title from: Buzzfeed * BookRiot * LitHub * The Millions * The Week * Good Housekeeping* Kirkus

A Best Fall Book Title from: Time * People * Entertainment Weekly * Salon * 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

"Attenberg gets so deep into the psyches of her characters that the story ends up seeming electric with ruin, and with possible resurrection...This is how you write a very good novel about a very bad man...All This Could Be Yours is full of hope--but it is to say that the novel is most powerful when it's in honest open battle with that which makes hope so difficult in the first place."
--New York Times

"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 is...a masterful psychoanalyst...she doesn't flinch from digging into life's messiness, pressing gently but resolutely into wounds to see what oozes out. Attenberg's medium, as much as the written word, is familial dysfunction. And the Tuchman family is a matryoshka stacking doll of dysfunction. [This is] an emotionally messy novel, but precise in craft. The narrative voice is complex and profound...Attenberg writes with care about even the most glancing characters - a random streetcar driver, a Pilates instructor on a hike, a stroke victim sharing Victor's hospital ward - her narrative touching so many souls, it's like a spirit passing through."
--USA Today

"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

"While the plot of All This Could Be Yours only takes place over a single day -- albeit a very, very long day -- the stories told in the novel encapsulate lifetimes."
--Salon

"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

"Big Little Lies meets Succession in the scorching heat of the Big Easy--that's All This Could Be Yours, the story of a power-hungry patriarch on his deathbed and a family reckoning with a secret past. Money, power and family are touched upon through Attenberg's emotional, humorous and sharply written accounts."
--Parade

"A richly drawn pleasure."
--People Magazine

"[A] master of modern fiction...toggling back and forth through perspectives and time, Attenberg gives each character their own rich history making even tertiary ones--a Pilates instructor, a CVS clerk, a world-weary coroner--come fantastically alive, sometimes in just a single line. New Orleans, too, is its own protagonist: a place of sticky booze and Spanish moss and endless, swampy heat that also knows its own clichs, inside and out."
--Entertainment Weekly

"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

"A smart, funny, beautifully observed family saga."
--Southern Living

"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

"Pointed, raw prose...soaked in the boiling intensity of August in the city."
--Electric Lit, "7 Books Set in New Orleans That Go Beyond Mardi Gras"

"Weaving together a riotous assortment of threads, Attenberg tenderly mines [the Tuchmans'] family his-tory and massive dysfunction not for clues as to what created the mon-strous Victor but for what a monster can create in spite of himself. Her characters--flawed, defensive, overwhelmed and frequently endearing--fizz off the page. Their inner lives coalesce beautifully into a funny and heart-stirring tribute to the nutty inscrutability of belonging to a family."
--Booklist, starred review

"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

"In her first New Orleans novel, Attenberg explores how deeply one person's life can impact a family for generations--and how people break free from the grip of deeply intertwined webs of toxic family history." --Deep South Magazine

"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

Author Bio

JAMI ATTENBERG is the New York Times best-selling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up. She has contributed essays to the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, and Longreads, among other publications. She lives in New Orleans.