Every Last One
Anna Quindlen, 2010
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400065745
Summary
In this breathtaking and beautiful novel, the #1 New York Times bestselling author Anna Quindlen creates an unforgettable portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions.
Mary Beth Latham is first and foremost a mother, whose three teenaged children come first, before her career as a landscape gardener, or even her life as the wife of a doctor. Caring for her family and preserving their everyday life is paramount. And so, when one of her sons, Max, becomes depressed, Mary Beth becomes focused on him, and is blindsided by a shocking act of violence.
What happens afterwards is a testament to the power of a woman’s love and determination, and to the invisible line of hope and healing that connects one human being with another.
Ultimately, in the hands of Anna Quindlen’s mesmerizing prose, Every Last One is a novel about facing every last one of the the things we fear most, about finding ways to navigate a road we never intended to travel, to live a life we never dreamed we’d have to live but must be brave enough to try. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 8, 1952
• Where—Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column
• Currently—New York, New York
Anna Quindlen could have settled onto a nice, lofty career plateau in the early 1990s, when she had won a Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column; but she took an unconventional turn, and achieved a richer result.
Quindlen, the third woman to hold a place among the New York Times' Op-Ed columnists, had already published two successful collections of her work when she decided to leave the paper in 1995. But it was the two novels she had produced that led her to seek a future beyond her column.
Quindlen had a warm, if not entirely uncritical, reception as a novelist. Her first book, Object Lessons, focused on an Irish American family in suburban New York in the 1960s. It was a bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of 1991, but was also criticized for not being as engaging as it could have been. One True Thing, Quindlen's exploration of an ambitious daughter's journey home to take care of her terminally ill mother, was stronger still—a heartbreaker that was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep. But Quindlen's fiction clearly benefited from her decision to leave the Times. Three years after that controversial departure, she earned her best reviews yet with Black and Blue, a chronicle of escape from domestic abuse.
Quindlen's novels are thoughtful explorations centering on women who may not start out strong, but who ultimately find some core within themselves as a result of what happens in the story. Her nonfiction meditations—particularly A Short Guide to a Happy Life and her collection of "Life in the 30s" columns, Living Out Loud—often encourage this same transition, urging others to look within themselves and not get caught up in what society would plan for them. It's an approach Quindlen herself has obviously had success with.
Extras
• To those who expressed surprise at Quindlen's apparent switch from columnist to novelist, the author points out that her first love was always fiction. She told fans in a Barnes & Noble.com chat, "I really only went into the newspaper business to support my fiction habit, but then discovered, first of all, that I loved reporting for its own sake and, second, that journalism would be invaluable experience for writing novels."
• Quindlen joined Newsweek as a columnist in 1999. She began her career at the New York Post in 1974, jumping to the New York Times in 1977.
• Quindlen's prowess as a columnist and prescriber of advice has made her a popular pick for commencement addresses, a sideline that ultimately inspired her 2000 title A Short Guide to a Happy Life Quindlen's message tends to be a combination of stopping to smell the flowers and being true to yourself. Quindlen told students at Mount Holyoke in 1999, "Begin to say no to the Greek chorus that thinks it knows the parameters of a happy life when all it knows is the homogenization of human experience. Listen to that small voice from inside you, that tells you to go another way. George Eliot wrote, 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.' It is never too early, either. And it will make all the difference in the world."
• Studying fiction at Barnard with the literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick, Quindlen's senior thesis was a collection of stories, one of which she sold to Seventeen magazine. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
[E]ngrossing…It would be unfair to reveal what happens to the Lathams, other than to say that tragedy of an outrageous, almost unbelievable, dimension strikes at the heart of the family. The events leading to this catastrophe, and then its painful aftermath, make for a spellbinding tale.
Maggie Scarf - New York Times
Anna Quindlen's new novel, Every Last One, packs an emotional punch similar to that of her previous bestsellers One True Thing and Black and Blue. Her ability to convey the mundanity of everyday life while also building suspense stems from her journalistic eye for detail…Quindlen succeeds at conveying the transience of everyday worries and the never-ending boundaries of a mother's love.
Nancy Robertson - Washington Post
In her latest, Quindlen (Rise and Shine) once again plumbs the searing emotions of ordinary people caught in tragic circumstances. Mary Beth Latham is a happily married woman entirely devoted to her three teenaged children. When her talented daughter Ruby casually announces she's breaking up with her boyfriend Kirenan, a former neighbor who's become like family, Mary Beth is slightly alarmed, but soon distracted by her son Max, who's feeling overshadowed by his extroverted, athletic twin brother Alex. Quindlen's novel moves briskly, propelled by the small dramas of summer camp, proms, soccer games and neighbors, until the rejected Kirenan blindsides the Lathams, and the reader, with an incredible act of violence. Left with almost nothing, Mary Beth struggles to cope with loss and guilt, protect what she has left, and regain a sense of meaning. Quindlen is in classic form, with strong characters and precisely cadenced prose that builds in intensity.
Publishers Weekly
Unforeseen catastrophe and how we cope with it is fiction’s raison d’etre, yet few novelists can turn the innocent “before” and the shattered “after” into fiction as accessible, specific, authentic, graceful, touching, and radiant as Quindlen’s.... [W]hat stands out most are her charming and insightful portrayals of mercurial, marvelous teenagers, her fluency in the complexity of family dynamics, and her deep understanding of mother love. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
Essayist and novelist Quindlen tosses a grenade of murderous mayhem into the middle of an otherwise standard-issue novel of manners about an upper-middle-class community in Vermont. Mary Beth Latham, who runs a landscaping business, and her eye-doctor husband Glen are the parents of 14-year-old twins Alex and Max and 17-year-old Ruby. The first half of the novel is Mary Beth's self-deprecating yet vaguely self-congratulatory narration of her family's life. Mary Beth's marriage to dull but decent Glen continues on middle-aged simmer. Soccer star Alex is as popular in his way as self-confident iconoclast Ruby, who is past her little bout of anorexia. Only Max, geeky and socially awkward, seems to be struggling. Although he does seem to like his therapist—by coincidence a specialist in twins and a twin himself—his only friend is Ruby's boyfriend Kiernan. But Ruby has outgrown Kiernan, who continues to hang around the house mooning after her and adopting the Lathams as a surrogate family since his own parents' nasty divorce. Mary Beth deals with small business crises and her Mexican workman. She and her friends commiserate over their children, although not their marriages, in admirable if not quite believable rectitude. Then Kiernan, whose mental problems Mary Beth has either missed or ignored, although they'll seem pretty apparent to the reader, goes berserk and commits a horrendous act of violence against Mary Beth's family. Only Mary Beth and Alex survive, and the remainder of the book details their road to emotional recovery. Unfortunately, while Quindlen's a pro at writing about the quotidian details in the life of a bourgeois Everywoman like Mary Beth, the actual plot is hard to swallow. The murders are too obviously meant to shock. Mary Beth's guilt over a brief affair she had with Kiernan's womanizing dad years ago rings false. And the outpouring of support she receives from friends and family is too saccharinely redemptive. An unsatisfying mix of melodrama and the mundane.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Every Last One:
1. As a parent...or a child once in a family...how well does Quindlen capture the dynamics and the nuances of family life? In your view, is the Latham family a typical—or atypical— family?
2. Is Mary Beth believable as a character? What kind of woman is she? What kind of mother... and wife? And the crying jags—"overwhelming and mysterious"—what are they about? Why does she feel lonely?
3. How would you describe Glen Latham? Is there a certain symbolic irony in his being an opthamologist?
4. Talk about Mary Beth and Glen's marriage? Is there still fire? How well does the couple communicate their feelings and fears with one another? How truely intimate are they emotionally? Does Quindlen paint a realistic portrait of a middle-aged marriage...for those of you who are there?
5. Talk about the three Latham children—Ruby and the two boys. Do you care for one more than the others? Are they realistic portrayals of siblings...and teens? What rings true to you...or false...in Quindlen's depiction of them?
6. When Ruby explains chaos theory to her mother—that a butterfly beating its wings in Mexico could result in a breeze in their back yard—what is Mary Beth's reaction...and why? How does chaos theory relate symbolically to the story?
7. Did you see it coming? What were the clues?
8. What might have prevented the tragedy? What might Mary Beth or Glen have done differently? Should they have paid greater attention?
9. Is the tragedy—or the scale of tragedy—necessary to the plot? Or do you feel it's gratuitous—it's purpose only to shock? Could Quindlen have achieved her goal some other way?
10. Talk about the aftermath...the possibility of healing. Is Quindlen's handling of grief honest? What did you come away from this novel having learned about how individuals cope with devastating loss? Can one gain something during loss?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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