All Fall Down (Weiner)

All Fall Down 
Jennifer Weiner, 2014
Atria Books
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451617788


Summary
Has your drinking or drug use become a problem?

Allison Weiss got her happy ending—a handsome husband, an adorable little girl, a job she loves, and a big house in the suburbs. But when she’s in the pediatrician’s office with her daughter and a magazine flips open to a quiz about addiction, she starts to wonder whether her use of prescription pills is becoming a problem.

On the one hand, it’s just prescription medication, the stuff her doctors give her. Is a Percocet at the end of a hard day really different than a glass of wine? Is it such a bad thing to pop a Vicodin after a brutal Jump & Pump class…or after your husband ignores you?

Back in the car, with her daughter safely buckled behind her, Allison opens the Altoid tin in her purse and slips a chalky white oval underneath her tongue. The pill unties her knotted muscles, erases the grime and ugliness of the city, soothes her as she frets about the truth of her looking-good life: that her husband’s becoming distant, that her daughter is acting out, that her father’s early Alzheimer’s is worsening and her mother’s barely managing to cope. She tells herself that the pills let her make it through her days…but what if her ever-increasing drug use, a habit that’s becoming expensive and hard to hide, is turning into her biggest problem of all?

All Fall Down is the story of a woman’s slide into addiction and struggle to find her way back up again. With a sparkling comedic touch and tender, true-to-life characterizations, this tale of empowerment and redemption is Jennifer Weiner’s most poignant, timely, and triumphant story yet. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 28, 1970
• Where—De Ridder, Louisiana, USA
• Raised—Simsbury, Connecticut
• Education—B.A., Princeton University
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania


Jennifer Weiner is an American writer, television producer, and former journalist. She is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Background
Weiner was born in DeRidder, Louisiana, where her father was stationed as an army physician. The next year, her family (including a younger sister and two brothers) moved to Simsbury, Connecticut, where Weiner spent her childhood.

Weiner's parents divorced when she was 16, and her mother came out as a lesbian at age 55. Weiner has said that she was "one of only nine Jewish kids in her high school class of 400" at Simsbury High School. She entered Princeton University at the age of 17 and received her bachelor of arts summa cum laude in English in 1991, having studied with J. D. McClatchy, Ann Lauterbach, John McPhee, Toni Morrison, and Joyce Carol Oates. Her first published story, "Tour of Duty," appeared in Seventeen magazine in 1992.

After graduating from college, Weiner joined the Centre Daily Times in State College, Pennsylvania, where she managed the education beat and wrote a regular column called "Generation XIII" (referring to the 13th generation following the American Revolution), aka "Generation X." From there, she moved on to Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader, still penning her "Generation XIII" column, before finding a job with the Philadelphia Inquirer as a features reporter.

Novels and TV
Weiner continued to write for the Inquirer, freelancing on the side for Mademoiselle, Seventeen, and other publications, until after her first novel, Good in Bed, was published in 2001.

In 2005, her second novel, In Her Shoes (2002), was made into a feature film starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine by 20th Century Fox. Her sixth novel, Best Friends Forever, was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and made Publishers Weekly's list of the longest-running bestsellers of the year. To date, she is the author of 10 bestselling books, including nine novels and a collection of short stories, with a reported 11 million copies in print in 36 countries.

In addition to writing fiction, Weiner is a co-creator and executive producer of the (now-cancelled) ABC Family sitcom State of Georgia, and she is known for "live-tweeting" episodes of the reality dating shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. In 2011, Time magazine named her to its list of the Top 140 Twitter Feeds "shaping the conversation." She is a self-described feminist.

Personal
Weiner married attorney Adam Bonin in October of 2001. They have two children and separated amicably in 2010. As of 2014 she lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with her partner Bill Syken.

Gender bias in the media
Weiner has been a vocal critic of what she sees as the male bias in the publishing industry and the media, alleging that books by male authors are better received than those written by women, that is, reviewed more often and more highly praised by critics. In 2010, she told Huffington Post,

I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book—in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention.... I think it's irrefutable that when it comes to picking favorites—those lucky few writers who get the double reviews AND the fawning magazine profile AND the back-page essay space AND the op-ed...the Times tends to pick white guys.

In a 2011 interview with the Wall Street Journal blog Speakeasy, she said, "There are gatekeepers who say chick lit doesn’t deserve attention but then they review Stephen King." When Jonathan Franzen's novel Freedom was published in 2010 to critical acclaim and extensive media coverage (including a cover story in Time), Weiner criticized what she saw as the ensuing "overcoverage," igniting a debate over whether the media's adulation of Franzen was an example of entrenched sexism within the literary establishment.

Though Weiner received some backlash from other female writers for her criticisms, a 2011 study by the organization VIDA bore out many of her claims, and Franzen himself, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, agreed with her:

To a considerable extent, I agree. When a male writer simply writes adequately about family, his book gets reviewed seriously, because: "Wow, a man has actually taken some interest in the emotional texture of daily life," whereas with a woman it’s liable to be labelled chick-lit. There is a long-standing gender imbalance in what goes into the canon, however you want to define the canon.

As for the label "chick lit", Weiner has expressed ambivalence towards it, embracing the genre it stands for while criticizing its use as a pejorative term for commercial women's fiction.

I’m not crazy about the label because I think it comes with a built-in assumption that you’ve written nothing more meaningful or substantial than a mouthful of cotton candy. As a result, critics react a certain way without ever reading the books.

In 2008, Weiner published a critique on her blog of a review by Curtis Sittenfeld of a Melissa Bank novel. Weiner deconstructs Sittenfeld's review, writing,

The more I think about the review, the more I think about the increasingly angry divide between ladies who write literature and chicks who write chick lit, the more it seems like a grown-up version of the smart versus pretty games of years ago; like so much jockeying for position in the cafeteria and mocking the girls who are nerdier/sluttier/stupider than you to make yourself feel more secure about your own place in the pecking order.

(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/21/2014.)

Book Reviews
The everymom heroine in this novel becomes a hard-core pill addict–and it’s impossible to look away.
Glamour


Weiner’s sly portrayal of family, entitlement and recovery culture is a romp—with an edge.
Good Housekeeping


[A] page-turning saga about a working mom, Allison Weiss, who uses pills to deal with recurrent pain, not to mention life’s increasing challenges.... Although the ultimate explanation for Allison’s problems is cliched, Weiner...convincingly shows that addiction can, indeed, be overcome, but only with genuine commitment and hard, hard work.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) An absolutely heartbreaking read that will leave readers haunted. Great for book clubs or for anyone trying to understand a loved one's addiction.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Weiner, who is a master at creating realistic characters, is at her best here, handling a delicate situation with witty dialogue and true-to-life scenes. Readers will be nodding their heads in sympathy as Allison struggles to balance being a mother, a daughter, and a wife while desperately just wanting to be herself.
Booklist

Discussion Questions
1. Why does Allison initially turn to painkillers as a way to solve her problems, or at least to make her feel better for a few hours? How do her answers to the magazine quiz she takes at Ellie’s doctor’s office make her feel, and how does she justify taking a pill in the car just moments after she completes the quiz? How would Allison’s story have been different if she had sought help immediately after taking the quiz?

2. From her work and her marriage to her role as primary caretaker for her daughter and parents, how do the pressures on Allison contribute to her addiction? Do you think that the pressures that Allison faces justify her addiction, or does she use the challenges in her life as an excuse to take more pills? How are the pressures facing Allison unique to her role as a mother and a wife, and what is the author saying about the pressures on women in society in general?

3. After Dave’s book deal falls through and Allison’s blogging becomes their primary source of income, how does their relationship change? Why do you think the author chose to have Allison write for a website specifically geared toward women and women’s issues?

4. As Allison sinks deeper into her addiction, her relationships with her parents, husband, daughter, friends, and boss change as everyone adapts to an Allison who is less reliable, stable, and emotionally present. How do Allison’s addiction and her subsequent efforts at recovery impact the people around her for better and for worse? How does Allison handle the changes she observes in the people she loves? What surprises her about her family’s and friends’ reactions and responses to her addiction, and what surprised you as a reader?

5. How does Allison’s definition of self change when she and Dave move to the suburbs, and why? How do Allison’s hopes for life in the suburbs compare to the reality of her new situation, and what does she give up to fit into the new life that Dave chose for them? Does living in the suburbs contribute to Allison’s addiction, or do you think she would have faced the same issues had she stayed in the city?

6. How does Allison’s ability to anonymously order pills through Penny Lane facilitate her addiction? Do you think her addiction would have reached such an extreme place if she didn’t have the knowledge and resources to order pills over the Internet? What does Allison’s reliance on ordering drugs online say about technology and the future of addiction?

7. When he finally confronts Allison about her addiction, Dave is extremely angry that she has put their daughter’s life in jeopardy. Could Dave have interfered with his wife’s addiction sooner? If you think Dave suspected that Allison was abusing drugs, why did he choose to wait so long to act? Do you think that Dave feels any responsibility for Allison’s addiction?

8. At Meadowcrest, Allison meets a range of women who are addicts, including a heroin-addicted teenage mother and a devout Christian alcoholic grandmother. Did the depiction of Allison’s friends at the rehab center change your perception of what an addict looks like? Which of the characters introduced at Meadowcrest did you sympathize or identify with most, and why?

9. From lying to Mrs. Dale about how impaired she was behind the wheel to her reluctance to share her full story with the women at Meadowcrest, Allison continually fabricates stories that hide the depth of her addiction. Why do you think Allison seems to be addicted to lying, and why is it so impossible for her to face the truth about her addiction? When do you think she finally realizes that she will never fully recover unless she is honest about her addiction with herself and others?

10. Compared to the women who wind up at Meadowcrest after committing felonies or losing custody of their children, Allison feels her story is “boring, bare-bones, drama-free,” but Mary points out that Allison just has a “high bottom” as opposed to a “rock bottom.” Discuss the concept of “high bottom” versus “rock bottom.” How does Allison’s view of her addiction and her “high bottom” make her feel different from the other women in rehab whose situations appear more dire?

11. Despite the intense subject matter of the book, the author manages to infuse humor into Allison’s journey, such as when she coaxes details about The Bachelor from Wanda the aide, or when she hatches her plan to escape by staging a musical about addiction and life in rehab. As a reader, how did you feel when you read these humorous scenes? Were you surprised that the author was able to bring some light to such a dark situation?

12. Even in the depths of her addiction, Allison strives to be a better mother than her own mother was to her, even sneaking out of Meadowcrest to attend Ellie’s sixth birthday party. What does Allison do differently from her own mother, and in what ways are they the same? Were you surprised when Allison’s mother revealed her secret toward the end of the book? How, if at all, would Allison’s life have changed if she had known the truth about her mother sooner?

13. Aubrey’s phone call at the end of the book reminds Allison how quickly addiction can consume a person. Why is it so important to Allison that she refuse Aubrey’s request to come stay with her? What do you think the future holds for both of them? In a year, where do you think Allison will be in terms of her relationships with her family and her work? In five years?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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