Every Last One

From the Publisher

“Spellbinding.”—The New York Times Book Review

“In a tale that rings strikingly true, [Anna] Quindlen captures both the beauty and the breathtaking fragility of family life.”—People

“We come to love this family, because Quindlen makes their ordinary lives so fascinating, their mundane interactions engaging and important. . . . Never read a book that made you cry? Be prepared for a deluge of tears.”—USA Today

“Anna Quindlen’s writing is like knitting; prose that wraps the reader in the warmth and familiarity of domestic life. . . . Then, as in her novels Black and Blue and One True Thing, Quindlen starts to pull at the world she has knitted, and lets it unravel across the pages.”—The Seattle Times

“Packs an emotional punch . . . Quindlen succeeds at conveying the transience of everyday worries and the never-ending boundaries of a mother’s love.”—The Washington Post

“A wise, closely observed, achingly eloquent book.”—The Huffington Post
 
“If you pick up Every Last One to read a few pages after dinner, you’ll want to read another chapter, and another and another, until you get to bed late.”—Associated Press
 
“Quindlen conjures family life from a palette of finely observed details.”—Los Angeles Times
 
“[Quindlen’s] emotional sophistication, and her journalistic eye for authentic dialogue and detail, bring the ring of truth to every page of this heartbreakingly timely novel.”—NPR

Nancy Robertson

Anna Quindlen's new novel, Every Last One, packs an emotional punch similar to that of her previous bestsellers One True Thing and Black and Blue. Her ability to convey the mundanity of everyday life while also building suspense stems from her journalistic eye for detail…Quindlen succeeds at conveying the transience of everyday worries and the never-ending boundaries of a mother's love.
—The Washington Post

Maggie Scarf

…engrossing…It would be unfair to reveal what happens to the Lathams, other than to say that tragedy of an outrageous, almost unbelievable, dimension strikes at the heart of the family. The events leading to this catastrophe, and then its painful aftermath, make for a spellbinding tale.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

In her latest, Quindlen (Rise and Shine) once again plumbs the searing emotions of ordinary people caught in tragic circumstances. Mary Beth Latham is a happily married woman entirely devoted to her three teenaged children. When her talented daughter Ruby casually announces she's breaking up with her boyfriend Kirenan, a former neighbor who's become like family, Mary Beth is slightly alarmed, but soon distracted by her son Max, who's feeling overshadowed by his extroverted, athletic twin brother Alex. Quindlen's novel moves briskly, propelled by the small dramas of summer camp, proms, soccer games and neighbors, until the rejected Kirenan blindsides the Lathams, and the reader, with an incredible act of violence. Left with almost nothing, Mary Beth struggles to cope with loss and guilt, protect what she has left, and regain a sense of meaning. Quindlen is in classic form, with strong characters and precisely cadenced prose that builds in intensity.
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USAToday

Every Last One is about excruciating grief. It's about how people treat victims of violence, survivors' guilt, random blame and figuring out how to go on living.

Kirkus Reviews

Essayist and novelist Quindlen (Good Dog. Stay., 2007, etc.) tosses a grenade of murderous mayhem into the middle of an otherwise standard-issue novel of manners about an upper-middle-class community in Vermont. Mary Beth Latham, who runs a landscaping business, and her eye-doctor husband Glen are the parents of 14-year-old twins Alex and Max and 17-year-old Ruby. The first half of the novel is Mary Beth's self-deprecating yet vaguely self-congratulatory narration of her family's life. Mary Beth's marriage to dull but decent Glen continues on middle-aged simmer. Soccer star Alex is as popular in his way as self-confident iconoclast Ruby, who is past her little bout of anorexia. Only Max, geeky and socially awkward, seems to be struggling. Although he does seem to like his therapist-by coincidence a specialist in twins and a twin himself-his only friend is Ruby's boyfriend Kiernan. But Ruby has outgrown Kiernan, who continues to hang around the house mooning after her and adopting the Lathams as a surrogate family since his own parents' nasty divorce. Mary Beth deals with small business crises and her Mexican workman. She and her friends commiserate over their children, although not their marriages, in admirable if not quite believable rectitude. Then Kiernan, whose mental problems Mary Beth has either missed or ignored, although they'll seem pretty apparent to the reader, goes berserk and commits a horrendous act of violence against Mary Beth's family. Only Mary Beth and Alex survive, and the remainder of the book details their road to emotional recovery. Unfortunately, while Quindlen's a pro at writing about the quotidian details in the life of a bourgeois Everywoman like Mary Beth, the actual plot is hard to swallow. The murders are too obviously meant to shock. Mary Beth's guilt over a brief affair she had with Kiernan's womanizing dad years ago rings false. And the outpouring of support she receives from friends and family is too saccharinely redemptive. An unsatisfying mix of melodrama and the mundane. Author tour to Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles