Barbara has spent decades enduring and defending her husband’s viciousness and infidelities, apparently content to live with them if his business continues to fund her extravagant lifestyle. One would naturally feel sympathy for Barbara, his wife, and Alex and Gary, his children, if they did not come across as equally ghastly, although, of course, they are what he has turned them into. Although Attenberg is vague on what Victor has done in his life to make so much money, it seems that he has been some sort of real-estate wheeler and dealer, an inveterate cheat, a dishonest broker, and a man without any moral compass.
Victor is a despicable creature, ruthless, bullying and violent, a man who has spent a lifetime physically and emotionally abusing his loved ones, to the point where they’re now wondering whether to mourn his passing or hang out the bunting. The story is set over a few days, when the patriarch of the Tuchman family, Victor, is taken ill and his wife and children gather to say their goodbyes. In this book she has created a cast of characters so cold that one comes away from it feeling they would be more suited for a horror novel than a dramatic one. Why do we continue to love the people who have hurt us the most? Those who have broken their promises, walked away from their responsibilities and scarred us with their words or fists? These are some of the questions at the heart of Jami Attenberg’s fifth novel, All This Could Be Yours, a title which, by the end, feels more like a threat than an aspiration.Īttenberg has written about dysfunctional families before – one of her earlier works, The Middlesteins, is a fine study of how one falls apart when a father decides that he’s had enough of his wife and simply walks away.
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