Every Last One, by Anna Quindlen

A few weeks ago, I was on a roll with a series of books I really enjoyed. Now I'm on a bit of a reverse roll--Every Last One is the third book in a row that I haven't cared for (and I may tell more in this review than you want to know if you plan to read the book).

Anna Quindlen is an excellent writer, and her nonfiction writing shows her to be an empathetic and intelligent woman. With the exception of One True Thing, which was based in part on events in her own life, I don't find her novels to have the depth I would expect from her.

Every Last One begins slowly, probably intentionally so. Quindlen is painting a picture of an "average" family with typical problems. There are some cracks in the marriage of Mary Beth and Glenn, but those cracks don't seem to threaten the future of their marriage. Their three teenagers have given them some problems--Ruby is a recovering anorexic who has just broken up with her long-time boyfriend (who isn't taking it well) and wants her parents to butt out of her personal life, and 14-year-old Max is a depressed nerd who apparently has no friends (not even his twin Alex, who is immersed in sports). Midway through the book, a terrible act of violence occurs, and the rest of the book tells how the surviving family members cope. Quindlen does a competent job describing the grieving process and the interactions of people who are grieving, both with their loved ones and other friends--I even cried once or twice. While this part of the book is much more interesting than the first half, I didn't feel she provided any new insights to a topic that has been covered many times before.

In all fairness, I have to admit that I haven't found any of the post-Columbine novels that deal with mass violence by teenagers particularly rewarding. I didn't care for either Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes or Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed (which uses the actual Columbine killings as a plot device). I couldn't make it through Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin (maybe I should try again). I know there are a number of recent YA titles that deal with teen violence; I haven't read any of these and may check out a couple to see how they deal with the topic. It may be that Quindlen has written a very insightful book about teen violence and grief and I am not personally ready for novels on this topic (although I have read several of the post-9/11 novels and found them to offer some new ways of thinking about that event). Nonetheless, I don't recommend this book.

Favorite passage:

I have a half-dozen clients now who hire me to decorate their trees; I have one who has three trees, one in the two-story living room, one in the wood-paneled den, one in the cavernous kitchen. I went into this business [landscaping] because I loved the slow and gradual nature of it, the undeniable logic of the natural world. Now much of what I do is simply show, an attempt to present a gaudy mask to others. There is nothing more joyless than decorating the Christmas tree of someone you barely know.