All This Could Be Yours

 Jami Attenberg, author of two previous novels, The Middlesteins and All Grown Up now brings readers another novel about dysfunctional families with, All This Could Be Yours.

The plot is complicated by the number of characters we are introduced to and how they come and go throughout the book.  Main characters are Barbra and Victor Tuchman, parents of Alex and Gary.
The book opens with Victor brought to the hospital by ambulance and his wife calling the children to inform them that their father is dying.

Of course this is a dysfunctional family so as we glance back into the past we hear the story of their family interactions from each of these main characters.  Barbra reflects on her stormy marriage, how and why she stayed in the marriage and how she feels now as it is ending.  Her daughter Alex comes back to see her mother hoping for answers to the unsettled childhood she experienced and wants closure for.  Her mother feels this all should be left in the past.

Gary avoids the whole situation by remaining unreachable in California not wanting to confront the past or acknowledge the present.  His marriage is in turmoil and he is trying to figure out where to go from here.

Alex goes into the hospital room with her unconscious father and talks to him about their shared past,
"I do not forgive you for making me believe less in the possibly of good in the world.  I do not forgive you for spitting on the notion of family."  Her mother told her that if she goes and makes peace with him now she will not have as many regrets when he is gone.  Alex thinks, "Who didn't want to get along with their father? Who didn't want their daddy's love? 'Everything is just business', he said.  A claim with which she could not argue, she knew for him that was true.  Still, it was then she knew, truly, he was bad. A bad capitalist."

As each family wrestles with their own relationship to Victor and the results of his harshness toward them, we learn about Victor's history and how each affected person tries to move forward with one another, for themselves and with their children.

The characters in this novel are Jewish and there is a feeling about their Judaism throughout the book.  Attenberg said in an interview that she thinks of the Jewishness of her characters as a characteristic and not that they are particularly religious. Victor and Barbra are first generation children of Russian immigrants who settled on the East Coast.

Then there are the outlying people who the Tuchmans encounter through their daily lives.  These characters are brought in and they interact and float through the plot in various ways to move the story along.