Comment

brianreynolds
Jan 04, 2013
I suppose the title “Everybody Has Everything,” although ambiguous and unrelated to the story, at least will remind book shoppers of the title “How Happy to Be.” As a novel, Everybody Has Everything is unambiguous for the most part and well-focussed on a few central themes: the precarious balance between motherhood and a career, the difficulty in maintaining a loving relationship, and trials of understanding and nourishing a young child. Katrina Onstad does a competent job of examining these themes. She also fashions a moment near the end of the book where the story that drives the themes becomes briefly absorbing. However, as so many others have pointed out, her inept and overly entitled characters do not inspire much enthusiasm in their journey toward a somewhat surprising rebirth (birth?) of their union. Not only does the reader suspect no one in the book has everything all together, there is a strong suspicion everyone has very little indeed to be smug about.