Every Last One

The February book club selection was even worse than I expected if you remember my previous post.  Anna Quindlen's Every Last One (#366) attempted to hit every low emotional note possible.  It was, as I feared, dreary, depressing, angst-ridden and guilt-laden.  To that, as far as I'm concerned, you can add emotionally manipulative.  I so wish I'd spent that precious time reading one of the other numerous books clamoring for attention on my bookshelves.  Oh, well...

One thing I cannot fault about this book is the writing.  Anna Quindlen is a mistress of her craft, as proved by the Pulitzer Prize on her desk.  But that was for one of her newspaper columns.  I probably would have appreciated that.

All I'll tell you about Every Last One should you ever choose to read it on your own is that this is the story of an upper-middle class American family, where everything appears fine on the surface.  But halfway through the book, something truly terrible happens.  The second half of the book is the characters trying to cope with that event.

I think you're supposed to read this novel with a box of Kleenex by your side, but I'll have to admit that all I felt was that the author was wasting her time trying to make me feel the appropriate emotions.  I didn't.  In fact, that's just why I felt manipulated reading this book.  It's for emotional masochists only.  Enough said.