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Overview
On the day Paul Miller’s pharmaceutical company goes public, he informs his wife, Janice, that their marriage is over and that the new fortune is his alone. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the Miller’s older daughter, Margaret, has been dumped by her hot actor boyfriend and is failing at her job, kind of spectacularly. Sliding toward bankruptcy, Margaret bails and heads for home, where her confused and lonesome teenage sister, Lizzie, is struggling with problems of her own: She’s become the school slut.From behind the walls of their Georgian colonial bunker, the Miller women wage battle with divorce lawyers, debt collectors, drug-dealing pool boys, evangelical neighbors, and country club ladies–and in the process all illusions and artifice fall away, forcing them to reckon with something far scarier and more consequential: their true selves.
Synopsis
A smart, comic listen about a Silicon Valley family in free fall over the course of one eventful summer.
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...
The New York Times - Sheelah Kolhatkar
All We Ever Wanted Was Every-thing employs a women-under-duress theme familiar to viewers of weeknight TV movies, but executed with more nerve and wit…Brown's comic scenes and devastating details make her postmillennial consumer universe surprisingly entertaining. Even that blockhead Janice, who inadvertently signed away all rights to her husband's fortune (this, after the world suffered through four Ronald Perelman divorces?), begins to insert herself into a hardened reader's affections after a while.
Editorials
Sheelah Kolhatkar
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything employs a women-under-duress theme familiar to viewers of weeknight TV movies, but executed with more nerve and wit…Brown's comic scenes and devastating details make her postmillennial consumer universe surprisingly entertaining. Even that blockhead Janice, who inadvertently signed away all rights to her husband's fortune (this, after the world suffered through four Ronald Perelman divorces?), begins to insert herself into a hardened reader's affections after a while.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
An unexceptional reading makes the audio version of this satiric work of women's fiction a pleasantly neutral experience. Paul Miller's announcement of his intent to divorce his wife leaves his accomplished housewife-socialite feeling empty and purposeless. Meanwhile, 28-year-old daughter Margaret attempts to hide from the catastrophic failure of her feminist magazine, and 14-year-old Lizzie deals with the consequences of believing that having sex with six guys in three months will make her cool. Rebecca Lowman reads expressively and unobtrusively: she doesn't detract from the text, but she doesn't enhance it, either. This smooth abridgement is acceptable, if not particularly diverting. A Spiegel & Grau hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 7).Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.