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What We All Long For
“They were born in the city from people born elsewhere.”
What We All Long For follows the overlapping stories of a close circle of second-generation twenty-somethings living in downtown Toronto. There’s Tuyen, a lesbian avant-garde artist and the daughter of Vietnamese parents who’ve never recovered from losing one of their children in the crush to board a boat out of Vietnam in the 1970s. Tuyen defines herself in opposition to just about everything her family believes in and strives for. She’s in love with her best friend Carla, a biracial bicycle courier, who’s still reeling from the loss of her mother to suicide eighteen years earlier and who must now deal with her brother Jamal’s latest acts of delinquency. Oku is a jazz-loving poet who, unbeknownst to his Jamaican-born parents, has dropped out of university. He is in constant conflict with his narrow-minded and verbally abusive father and tormented by his unrequited love for Jackie, a gorgeous black woman who runs a hip clothing shop on Queen Street West and dates only white men. Like each of her friends, Jackie feels alienated from her parents, former hipsters from Nova Scotia who never made it out of subsidized housing after their lives became entangled with desire and disappointment.
The four characters try to make a life for themselves in the city, supporting one another through their family struggles.
There’s a fifth main character, Quy, the child who Tuyen’s parents lost in Vietnam. In his first-person narrative, Quy describes how he survived in various refugee camps, then in the Thai underworld. After years of being hardened, he has finally made his way to Toronto and will soon be reunited with his family – whether to love them or hurt them, it’s not clear. His story builds to a breathless crescendo in an ending that will both shock and satisfy readers.
What We All Long For is a gripping and, at times, heart-rending story about identity, longing and loss in a cosmopolitan city. No other writer has presented such a powerful and richly textured portrait of present-day Toronto.
But What We All Long For is not only about a particular city. It’s about the universal experience of being human. As Walcott puts it, “Brand makes us see ourselves differently and anew. She translates our desires and experiences into a language, an art that allows us to voice that which we live, but could not utter or bring to voice until she did so for us.”
What We All Long For follows the overlapping stories of a close circle of second-generation twenty-somethings living in downtown Toronto. There’s Tuyen, a lesbian avant-garde artist and the daughter of Vietnamese parents who’ve never recovered from losing one of their children in the crush to board a boat out of Vietnam in the 1970s. Tuyen defines herself in opposition to just about everything her family believes in and strives for. She’s in love with her best friend Carla, a biracial bicycle courier, who’s still reeling from the loss of her mother to suicide eighteen years earlier and who must now deal with her brother Jamal’s latest acts of delinquency. Oku is a jazz-loving poet who, unbeknownst to his Jamaican-born parents, has dropped out of university. He is in constant conflict with his narrow-minded and verbally abusive father and tormented by his unrequited love for Jackie, a gorgeous black woman who runs a hip clothing shop on Queen Street West and dates only white men. Like each of her friends, Jackie feels alienated from her parents, former hipsters from Nova Scotia who never made it out of subsidized housing after their lives became entangled with desire and disappointment.
The four characters try to make a life for themselves in the city, supporting one another through their family struggles.
There’s a fifth main character, Quy, the child who Tuyen’s parents lost in Vietnam. In his first-person narrative, Quy describes how he survived in various refugee camps, then in the Thai underworld. After years of being hardened, he has finally made his way to Toronto and will soon be reunited with his family – whether to love them or hurt them, it’s not clear. His story builds to a breathless crescendo in an ending that will both shock and satisfy readers.
What We All Long For is a gripping and, at times, heart-rending story about identity, longing and loss in a cosmopolitan city. No other writer has presented such a powerful and richly textured portrait of present-day Toronto.
But What We All Long For is not only about a particular city. It’s about the universal experience of being human. As Walcott puts it, “Brand makes us see ourselves differently and anew. She translates our desires and experiences into a language, an art that allows us to voice that which we live, but could not utter or bring to voice until she did so for us.”
318 pages, Paperback
First published January 11, 2005
84 people are currently reading
2633 people want to read
About the author
Dionne Brand
61 books487 followersAs a young girl growing up in Trinidad, Dionne Brand submitted poems to the newspapers under the pseudonym Xavier Simone, an homage to Nina Simone, whom she would listen to late at night on the radio. Brand moved to Canada when she was 17 to attend the University of Toronto, where she earned a degree in Philosophy and English, a Masters in the Philosophy of Education and pursued PhD studies in Women’s History but left the program to make time for creative writing.
Dionne Brand first came to prominence in Canada as a poet. Her books of poetry include No Language Is Neutral, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and Land to Light On, winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Award and thirsty, finalist for the Griffin Prize and winner of the Pat Lowther Award for poetry. Brand is also the author of the acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, which was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Award, and At the Full and Change of the Moon. Her works of non-fiction include Bread Out of Stone and A Map to the Door of No Return.
What We All Long For was published to great critical acclaim in 2005. While writing the novel, Brand would find herself gazing out the window of a restaurant in the very Toronto neighbourhood occupied by her characters. “I’d be looking through the window and I’d think this is like the frame of the book, the frame of reality: ‘There they are: a young Asian woman passing by with a young black woman passing by, with a young Italian man passing by,” she says in an interview with The Toronto Star. A recent Vanity Fair article quotes her as saying “I’ve ‘read’ New York and London and Paris. And I thought this city needs to be written like that, too.”
In addition to her literary accomplishments, Brand is Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.
For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/dionne-b...
Dionne Brand first came to prominence in Canada as a poet. Her books of poetry include No Language Is Neutral, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and Land to Light On, winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Award and thirsty, finalist for the Griffin Prize and winner of the Pat Lowther Award for poetry. Brand is also the author of the acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, which was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Award, and At the Full and Change of the Moon. Her works of non-fiction include Bread Out of Stone and A Map to the Door of No Return.
What We All Long For was published to great critical acclaim in 2005. While writing the novel, Brand would find herself gazing out the window of a restaurant in the very Toronto neighbourhood occupied by her characters. “I’d be looking through the window and I’d think this is like the frame of the book, the frame of reality: ‘There they are: a young Asian woman passing by with a young black woman passing by, with a young Italian man passing by,” she says in an interview with The Toronto Star. A recent Vanity Fair article quotes her as saying “I’ve ‘read’ New York and London and Paris. And I thought this city needs to be written like that, too.”
In addition to her literary accomplishments, Brand is Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.
For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/dionne-b...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 214 reviews
February 12, 2012
Race-conscious and class-conscious but with a young, street-smart cast of characters, What We All Long For should have been amazing. It should have deserved every bit that “Globe and Mail Best Book” seal on its cover. Dionne Brand should have wowed me with her portrayal of first-generation Vietnamese Canadian Tuyen versus Tuyen’s immigrant parents and sisters. The troubled relationship between Carla and her kid brother, Jamal, should have opened my eyes to the subtle difficulties of living in a city where the colour of one’s skin still creates certain expectations and raises certain obstacles. Nature versus nurture, class versus conscience, youthful rebellion versus the wisdom of one’s elders … these are all motifs in What We All Long For, and Brand squanders each and every one of them.
As one might expect from a notable poet, Brand’s prose is beautiful. Although, in the end, I did not enjoy the story itself, the act of reading this novel was still pleasant. Brand has a very good grasp on the conceptualization of space in a way that makes it easy for me, as a non-visual reader, to appreciate. Not only does she conjure images and sounds, but she pays close attention to textures and smells. Environments are an important component to her scenes, from the artistic chaos of Tuyen’s apartment to the contrasting refuge from the world of Carla’s next door. There’s a great deal of pathetic fallacy and other literary devices that authors less devoted to the craft of writing occasionally omit from their novels. What We All Long For is disappointing, but it is beautifully disappointing.
I’m going to be hard on this book because it starts out with promise. I picked it up for free on a whim from a table at the university where such free books occasionally manifest. I had not heard of Dionne Brand before, and to be honest, the back cover copy makes this book sound like what it turned out to be: an unremarkable and somewhat mediocre story centred around identity, family, and Toronto. It’s the same sort of bland fare that gives CanLit a bland name. But I decided to give it a chance, because I like to keep an open-mind about books and authors I haven’t encountered before. And What We All Long For starts off strong, with a child lost while emigrating from Vietnam, and another child lost after she grows up and decides she should move out.
Vu Tuan and Vu Cam lost their son Quy as they fled Vietnam. In the decades to follow he would grow up in Thailand and Malaysia, becoming a criminal out of necessity and then because he knew nothing better. This part of the book is a fascinating look at the effects of environment on a child’s upbringing. Quy’s chapters are in his own voice, and they communicate the careful pragmatism that a child in his situation has to adopt. Unsavoury people use him for their own ends, so he learns to use them in return. For him, crime is not a question of morality or ethics; it’s business and survival. The fact that he once had a family, and that his parents might still be looking for him after all these years, is largely immaterial—an afterthought against the overriding need to keep moving and keep innovating before someone else does.
Most of the novel, however, follows Tuyen, Carla, Jackie, and Oku. Four twenty-somethings living in Toronto, they all have their twenty-something problems and their conflicts with their parents. Also, their racial heritages—Tuyen is Vietnamese, the others are from various Black communities, and Carla’s mother was White—play an important role in the story and these characters’ conflicts. Tuyen has embraced the life of an artist free from obligations; against her parents’ wishes, she moved out from the family home and in so doing feels that she has escaped from beneath their thumbs. Their persistence in trying to find Quy seems like her to be grasping at straws from the past. Meanwhile, Tuyen struggles with her relationship with Carla, her best friend—except that Tuyen would like it to be more.
Tuyen’s obsession with Carla borders on creepy:
Straight ladies, is this true? (I somehow doubt it.) I realize I shouldn’t identify everything Tuyen says with what Brand believes, but this did nothing to help me sympathize with Tuyen as a character. For someone who likes to think of herself as artistic, creative, and open-minded, she is awfully self-centred. Yet I suppose there is a small element of the romantic idea of unrequited love here: Tuyen loves her best friend, who does not by a quirk of her biology return that affection on the same level. But the creepiness goes deeper than that:
Consider that for a moment. Tuyen is so wrapped up in this idea of Carla’s hidden sexuality that she pushes Carla when she is under the influence. If that doesn’t seem creepy, imagine if this were the same scene, but with a man in Tuyen’s place. Yeah.
Oh, but What We All Long For does have a man experiencing unrequited love. Oku has feelings for Jackie, and while Jackie has been good enough to have sex with him once or twice, she doesn’t feel the same way for him. To be fair to Oku, he doesn’t approach this the same way Tuyen does with Carla. But his approach is also clingy, and if not creepy, it walks that fine line between sweet and stalking. Oku strikes me as a nice guy genuinely trying to find out what he wants to do with his life: he dropped out of graduate school in literature but wants to avoid the life of manual labour that his father believes is the only acceptable career path. As with Tuyen’s unrequited love, though, I’m not so comfortable with how Oku pursues Jackie.
Carla’s plot is probably my favourite after Quy’s. Her childhood was troubled: her father was living with another woman, Nadine, when he met her mother. And he continued to live with Nadine after Carla and Jamal were born. Eventually, this took its toll, leading Carla’s mother to commit suicide. So Carla and Jamal moved in with Derek and Nadine, and they were one awkward family unit. Then Carla moved out, Jamal started boosting cars, and Derek continued to ignore his paternal responsibilities. Carla has become Jamal’s bail-person and surrogate mother, but she has no idea how to rescue him from the vicious circle of crime into which he has fallen. Every time she gets him out of jail, he quickly finds a way to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
Like so many other disadvantaged youth, his story is a mixture of racial discrimination and poor judgement, a dangerous combination that puts him at risk for prison time on the order of decades or life—if life on the street doesn’t kill him first. There is no right answer, no easy solution, to Carla and Jamal’s quandary. And I really like how Brand explores that from its various angles, including the emotional confrontation that Carla has with her father. Blame flies around like it’s on sale; tempers flare; and Carla storms out and commits the act of a child punishing a parent.
What We All Long For would not be all that bad were it not for the ending. I don’t want to spoil it. Suffice it to say, two disparate plotlines don’t converge so much as collide in such a contrived way that it made me almost—almost—throw the book across the room. I don’t know what Brand was thinking; I guess she thought the coincidence was poetic and particularly ironic as a way to end the book. But the effect is cheap and tawdry, and it undermines what little good will her socially-conscious politics had otherwise incurred. And then, of course, we never get to learn about the aftermath. The “violent, unexpected encounter that will alter forever the lives of Tuyen and her friends”, as the back cover copy promised it, certainly does just that—not that we ever get to see how it alters their lives.
Good book? Bad book? What We All Long For is well-intentioned, I suppose, a brilliant attempt that falls short of the mark. It’s burdened by clumsy characterization and poor plotting. This is regrettable, because we need more novels like this—authentic, Canadian novels with main characters from visible minorities, novels written by authors who aren’t white guys trying to sound multicultural. So I wish I could have given What We All Long For the praise it seems to have earned from everywhere else … alas, its provenance does not excuse its flaws, which are too numerous to ignore.
As one might expect from a notable poet, Brand’s prose is beautiful. Although, in the end, I did not enjoy the story itself, the act of reading this novel was still pleasant. Brand has a very good grasp on the conceptualization of space in a way that makes it easy for me, as a non-visual reader, to appreciate. Not only does she conjure images and sounds, but she pays close attention to textures and smells. Environments are an important component to her scenes, from the artistic chaos of Tuyen’s apartment to the contrasting refuge from the world of Carla’s next door. There’s a great deal of pathetic fallacy and other literary devices that authors less devoted to the craft of writing occasionally omit from their novels. What We All Long For is disappointing, but it is beautifully disappointing.
I’m going to be hard on this book because it starts out with promise. I picked it up for free on a whim from a table at the university where such free books occasionally manifest. I had not heard of Dionne Brand before, and to be honest, the back cover copy makes this book sound like what it turned out to be: an unremarkable and somewhat mediocre story centred around identity, family, and Toronto. It’s the same sort of bland fare that gives CanLit a bland name. But I decided to give it a chance, because I like to keep an open-mind about books and authors I haven’t encountered before. And What We All Long For starts off strong, with a child lost while emigrating from Vietnam, and another child lost after she grows up and decides she should move out.
Vu Tuan and Vu Cam lost their son Quy as they fled Vietnam. In the decades to follow he would grow up in Thailand and Malaysia, becoming a criminal out of necessity and then because he knew nothing better. This part of the book is a fascinating look at the effects of environment on a child’s upbringing. Quy’s chapters are in his own voice, and they communicate the careful pragmatism that a child in his situation has to adopt. Unsavoury people use him for their own ends, so he learns to use them in return. For him, crime is not a question of morality or ethics; it’s business and survival. The fact that he once had a family, and that his parents might still be looking for him after all these years, is largely immaterial—an afterthought against the overriding need to keep moving and keep innovating before someone else does.
Most of the novel, however, follows Tuyen, Carla, Jackie, and Oku. Four twenty-somethings living in Toronto, they all have their twenty-something problems and their conflicts with their parents. Also, their racial heritages—Tuyen is Vietnamese, the others are from various Black communities, and Carla’s mother was White—play an important role in the story and these characters’ conflicts. Tuyen has embraced the life of an artist free from obligations; against her parents’ wishes, she moved out from the family home and in so doing feels that she has escaped from beneath their thumbs. Their persistence in trying to find Quy seems like her to be grasping at straws from the past. Meanwhile, Tuyen struggles with her relationship with Carla, her best friend—except that Tuyen would like it to be more.
Tuyen’s obsession with Carla borders on creepy:
Carla had made it clear to Tuyen that she was straight, but Tuyen could not quite believe her. If she made herself useful enough, if she listened and coaxed enough, maybe Carla would come around. Straight women were never as straight as the put out, Tuyen figured. She had, after all, slept with numerous straight women. They merely had to be convinced.
Straight ladies, is this true? (I somehow doubt it.) I realize I shouldn’t identify everything Tuyen says with what Brand believes, but this did nothing to help me sympathize with Tuyen as a character. For someone who likes to think of herself as artistic, creative, and open-minded, she is awfully self-centred. Yet I suppose there is a small element of the romantic idea of unrequited love here: Tuyen loves her best friend, who does not by a quirk of her biology return that affection on the same level. But the creepiness goes deeper than that:
And there had been a few times, after one of their parties, when she had found herself in Carla’s bed, cuddling on the pretext that they were both high and drunk. Which was pretext enough for Carla to pretend that nothing had happened and to pull herself away from Tuyen’s sleeping body quickly in the morning.
… so far her entreaties had been rebuffed and she’d had to settle for near-unconscious probings and feels when Carla could claim drunkenness or drug-induced forgetfulness.
Consider that for a moment. Tuyen is so wrapped up in this idea of Carla’s hidden sexuality that she pushes Carla when she is under the influence. If that doesn’t seem creepy, imagine if this were the same scene, but with a man in Tuyen’s place. Yeah.
Oh, but What We All Long For does have a man experiencing unrequited love. Oku has feelings for Jackie, and while Jackie has been good enough to have sex with him once or twice, she doesn’t feel the same way for him. To be fair to Oku, he doesn’t approach this the same way Tuyen does with Carla. But his approach is also clingy, and if not creepy, it walks that fine line between sweet and stalking. Oku strikes me as a nice guy genuinely trying to find out what he wants to do with his life: he dropped out of graduate school in literature but wants to avoid the life of manual labour that his father believes is the only acceptable career path. As with Tuyen’s unrequited love, though, I’m not so comfortable with how Oku pursues Jackie.
Carla’s plot is probably my favourite after Quy’s. Her childhood was troubled: her father was living with another woman, Nadine, when he met her mother. And he continued to live with Nadine after Carla and Jamal were born. Eventually, this took its toll, leading Carla’s mother to commit suicide. So Carla and Jamal moved in with Derek and Nadine, and they were one awkward family unit. Then Carla moved out, Jamal started boosting cars, and Derek continued to ignore his paternal responsibilities. Carla has become Jamal’s bail-person and surrogate mother, but she has no idea how to rescue him from the vicious circle of crime into which he has fallen. Every time she gets him out of jail, he quickly finds a way to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
Like so many other disadvantaged youth, his story is a mixture of racial discrimination and poor judgement, a dangerous combination that puts him at risk for prison time on the order of decades or life—if life on the street doesn’t kill him first. There is no right answer, no easy solution, to Carla and Jamal’s quandary. And I really like how Brand explores that from its various angles, including the emotional confrontation that Carla has with her father. Blame flies around like it’s on sale; tempers flare; and Carla storms out and commits the act of a child punishing a parent.
What We All Long For would not be all that bad were it not for the ending. I don’t want to spoil it. Suffice it to say, two disparate plotlines don’t converge so much as collide in such a contrived way that it made me almost—almost—throw the book across the room. I don’t know what Brand was thinking; I guess she thought the coincidence was poetic and particularly ironic as a way to end the book. But the effect is cheap and tawdry, and it undermines what little good will her socially-conscious politics had otherwise incurred. And then, of course, we never get to learn about the aftermath. The “violent, unexpected encounter that will alter forever the lives of Tuyen and her friends”, as the back cover copy promised it, certainly does just that—not that we ever get to see how it alters their lives.
Good book? Bad book? What We All Long For is well-intentioned, I suppose, a brilliant attempt that falls short of the mark. It’s burdened by clumsy characterization and poor plotting. This is regrettable, because we need more novels like this—authentic, Canadian novels with main characters from visible minorities, novels written by authors who aren’t white guys trying to sound multicultural. So I wish I could have given What We All Long For the praise it seems to have earned from everywhere else … alas, its provenance does not excuse its flaws, which are too numerous to ignore.
January 30, 2018
2.5*
What a puzzling book. I found it on a reading list recommending contemporary Canadian fiction - and while it is fairly contemporary (2005), at least compared to some of my other reads, and it is certainly Canadian, I am not sure why it received a lot of praise and recommendations.
Some of the writing was beautiful and quite poetic, but I could not stand any of the main characters, who were a group of not-quite grown up early-twenty-somethings who all left their families to live in a shared house.
I could understand some of their issues, I could even relate to some of them - after all I was an early-twenty-something in 2005 - but most of the time I just wanted to tell them to grow up. As for the other characters, the parents, the siblings, the friends, ... they too all seemed to be broken in some way. I'm not criticising the book for that. I get that this is part of the book's message - that "we all long for something" as the title implies - but does every scene in the book have to be so dour? Is it not quite cliche enough for a Canadian literary novel to mention all sort of Toronto street names? Does it also have to be really slow-paced?
Don't get me wrong, there were some interesting aspects in the book, too, like what it means to grow up in a minority community or try and live on the fringes of society or what it is like to be a refugee or immigrant, but those aspects were not developed enough to make the book work for me.
What a puzzling book. I found it on a reading list recommending contemporary Canadian fiction - and while it is fairly contemporary (2005), at least compared to some of my other reads, and it is certainly Canadian, I am not sure why it received a lot of praise and recommendations.
Some of the writing was beautiful and quite poetic, but I could not stand any of the main characters, who were a group of not-quite grown up early-twenty-somethings who all left their families to live in a shared house.
I could understand some of their issues, I could even relate to some of them - after all I was an early-twenty-something in 2005 - but most of the time I just wanted to tell them to grow up. As for the other characters, the parents, the siblings, the friends, ... they too all seemed to be broken in some way. I'm not criticising the book for that. I get that this is part of the book's message - that "we all long for something" as the title implies - but does every scene in the book have to be so dour? Is it not quite cliche enough for a Canadian literary novel to mention all sort of Toronto street names? Does it also have to be really slow-paced?
Don't get me wrong, there were some interesting aspects in the book, too, like what it means to grow up in a minority community or try and live on the fringes of society or what it is like to be a refugee or immigrant, but those aspects were not developed enough to make the book work for me.
July 27, 2011
All I can say is this was highly disappointing and a case where I should've listened to the reviews. The writing about the city and the mix of cultures/races of a group of friends in Canada was really interesting and well done and probably made up my favorite parts of the book. However, Tuyen's attention to Carla got pretty creepy at times. Yes, she was in love, but Carla kept telling her she wasn't gay (and sounded practically asexual/aromantic) and yet Tuyen kept doing things like taking advantage of when Carla was drunk to cuddle in bed. It isn't rape level, but it was creepy and made me really uncomfortable to read Tuyen's parts when her original pining had been so lyrically written in the first chapters.
Otherwise, the 'ending' was very disappointing. I'm not against open endings, but nothing was answered. Did Quy die? Did Oku finally move on with his life and get over Jackie? Did Tuyen move on from Carla and how did her art go? Did Carla finally move on with her life? We never find out. It just ends, like the author got bored and quit there. All we know is Jamal should've stayed in jail, and Carla drinks coffee and thinks about going back to her apartment with Tuyen working on her sculpture?
In the end, it left a bitter taste in my mouth that I had cared about these characters, read on about them and the author was so careless with them and just left all their stories untold. It could've been so much more.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 25, 2014
WHAT WAS THAT!?!? Seriously. I hate when a book ends and I want to throw it across the room. This book claims to be about a boy named "Quy" who was lost when his family was escaping Vietnam. It is 30ish years later in Toronto and, as the back cover states, "... the tension surrounding Quy's arrival mounts, and leads to a violent, unexpected encounter that will alter forever the lives of [basically all the rest of the characters]." Quite frankly there is no tension until page 298 and this book is only 318 pages long. And then, get this, the book ENDS with said violent, unexpected encounter, and I, as the reader, actually have no idea how this alters the lives of the people I spent over 300 pages reading about. The book wasn't bad, it was actually kind of interesting, but most of it is about Quy's younger sister (who was born after the family minus Quy made it to Canada) and her three friends. And then, nothing... The four characters whose lives are followed throughout, who matter to the reader, suddenly don't matter at all. It's kind of like "Follow these four young people as they try to navigate life... They have troubles, things are hard... Care about them... Wait a minute, Quy is home! Oh crap this bad thing happened. And... The End. " Yep. That's the book.
February 23, 2007
Highly overrated. Serious lack of character development left me cold.
Read
September 29, 2010Didn’t like this book much. There wasn’t very much to the plot and I felt myself relieved when each section ended. I felt there was a lot that I could have connected with in a few of the characters but I was prevented from doing so by my hatred of them. Linda or Martha or whatever her name was was a bike messenger and for a while near the beginning I wanted to bike through the streets of Toronto with her. But by the end, I hated her as much as the other characters. I can’t remember what the guy’s name was, but I liked him for a while because he loved Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman but at the end I hated him too. I didn’t care for the tone of the story either. I didn’t like the G20 Quebec City riot scene, I didn’t like the back story of how all the friends met and actually didn’t like anything about this book. Was I supposed to feel pity for them? Because I didn’t. Maybe I’m just an old grampa and have nothing in common with the youth of today, but I really wanted to smack them kids upside the heads with me walking stick.
January 24, 2024
Ending was so disappointing.
Read
November 7, 2023Read for my 1900-now Black lesbian lit class. I’m not going to lie, for the first half of this book, I couldn’t keep the character names straight. I finally started a list of names and who they were and it made the reading experience wayyy more enjoyable lol. Overall, I enjoyed this and I think the writing style is very unique and beautiful to read. Also the ending… 🤧
March 24, 2010
I liked this book somewhat, but it was the main character Tuyen who I didn't like out of everything. I found Oku (and when I read the last part that had him, I was upset that it was a chapter that talked about Jackie's parents more than him) Jackie and Carla more interesting than her. Yes they all suffered because of their parents, but those three actually suffered and did their best to deal with it. Tuyen on the other hand is a lazy, manipulative, hypocritical 20-something year old. She's lazy because as she is living on her own trying to be an artist (which everyone knows is very hard to do) and she has no job at all and doesn't plan on getting one, so what does she do to cover her obvious money problems? Well the answer leads to the manipulative part of her, as from when she was a child and she made her parents get whatever she wanted, during the novel she goes to her parents home to get her mother to give her money, which also leads to her being a hypocrite. While her friends try to actually keep away from their parents 100%, if Tuyen is running short on cash or is hungry, she goes home to get either things (sometimes her brother Binh actually brings her food), and yet she wants to stay away from her family so badly because she feels like they are "suffocating her" when she was living there before. So yeah, she is a hypocrite through and through, if she wants to stay away from her family then she should completely stay away in all aspects like Jackie and Carla do, Oku does break away later on from his father as part of his character development.
Also what really upsets me about Tuyen is how throughout the novel the reader finds out that she has a crush on Carla, and Carla knows this but is not a lesbian. Carla has stated many times that she is not interested but this doesn't stop Tuyen from trying to manipulate her friend into finding the lesbian side of herself, so she (Tuyen) can finally have sex with her crush and claim her (Carla) as her own. It's like she doesn't care for Carla's feelings at all, even though she does care about Carla's feelings. But why she doesn't understand her crush completely is because as stated in the beginning, all four friends never revealed anything about their lives with their family. So Tuyen does not know why during the novel Carla is not interest in sex and distant, but that doesn't stop her from trying to seduce Carla when she should be respecting her boundaries. It's only at the end after finally breaking free from what binds her that the reader gets the sense that Carla will open up to Tuyen, but god throughout the whole novel it's like someone should spray Tuyen with a hose to cool her off.
Aside from that factor the book is decent, the way Brand uses language to describe the feeling of the city, the people, and everything in between is amazing. Like I said Oku, Jackie and Carla are great characters, but because the story focuses more on Tuyen the reader does not get a more in depth look like they do with Tuyen and her brother Quy. While we do see them develop and move past their problems the story is about Tuyen's family and that's what we have to look at a lot more.
Overall good story, most characters are great, main character is mehand the ending is meh as well. Though I love the language and now I'm interested in reading more of Brand's work.
Also what really upsets me about Tuyen is how throughout the novel the reader finds out that she has a crush on Carla, and Carla knows this but is not a lesbian. Carla has stated many times that she is not interested but this doesn't stop Tuyen from trying to manipulate her friend into finding the lesbian side of herself, so she (Tuyen) can finally have sex with her crush and claim her (Carla) as her own. It's like she doesn't care for Carla's feelings at all, even though she does care about Carla's feelings. But why she doesn't understand her crush completely is because as stated in the beginning, all four friends never revealed anything about their lives with their family. So Tuyen does not know why during the novel Carla is not interest in sex and distant, but that doesn't stop her from trying to seduce Carla when she should be respecting her boundaries. It's only at the end after finally breaking free from what binds her that the reader gets the sense that Carla will open up to Tuyen, but god throughout the whole novel it's like someone should spray Tuyen with a hose to cool her off.
Aside from that factor the book is decent, the way Brand uses language to describe the feeling of the city, the people, and everything in between is amazing. Like I said Oku, Jackie and Carla are great characters, but because the story focuses more on Tuyen the reader does not get a more in depth look like they do with Tuyen and her brother Quy. While we do see them develop and move past their problems the story is about Tuyen's family and that's what we have to look at a lot more.
Overall good story, most characters are great, main character is mehand the ending is meh as well. Though I love the language and now I'm interested in reading more of Brand's work.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 19, 2020
What I liked: the gorgeous prose, the visceral sense of Toronto the city, the vivid depictions of Tuyen's art installations, the descriptions of the black dance clubs of Toronto in the 60s and 70s.
What I didn't like: the pacing, the contrived 'coincidence' of the ending when two plot lines converged.
And the book also made me wonder: most of the parents of the twenty somethings the book follows moved to Toronto to give their children a better life. And I wonder how many of them would have felt they were actually living their best life?
Anyway, Brand is a poet with an excellent sense of space and setting, and that clearly shines through here. But the characters themselves left me kinda cold.
What I didn't like: the pacing, the contrived 'coincidence' of the ending when two plot lines converged.
And the book also made me wonder: most of the parents of the twenty somethings the book follows moved to Toronto to give their children a better life. And I wonder how many of them would have felt they were actually living their best life?
Anyway, Brand is a poet with an excellent sense of space and setting, and that clearly shines through here. But the characters themselves left me kinda cold.
July 6, 2020
I am not entirely sure how I felt about this novel. I felt that there was little to now character development. There was no flow to the story at all, almost felt as though there was no purpose to the story? There was also no conclusion, it left me feeling kind of empty. Each characters story was very sad and very different from my own reality making me want to read more and learn more, but I somehow felt no emotional connection to this book.
I am very interested to hear others opinions on this novel.
I am very interested to hear others opinions on this novel.
August 15, 2019
I despised this book. I hate it so much that I'm not even going to attempt a "proper" intellectual review because I know it's going to devolve into a rant anyways.
This book is a chore to read. At first I was somewhat intrigued because I like Brand's style and because the story seemed to have potential (but whoever wrote the synopsis is a goddamn filthy liar). I got discouraged as I neared the hundred-page mark and no plot seemed to surface. I didn't want to read more than one or two chapters a day...some days I didn't even pick up the book at all.
There are two major issues with the book, which are bad enough as it is, but put together they have a multiplier effect that makes the book 10x worse than it should be: 1) The book is 95% character, 4% theme, and 1% plot; 2) THE CHARACTERS ARE HORRIBLE, TWO-DIMENSIONAL TRASH.
So there are five "major" characters in the book. Four of them met in high school and are now twenty-something bohemian POC living in seedy parts of Toronto. I get that Brand is a POC herself, but the way she writes about it is so uncompelling. One of the main themes of the novel is identity/belonging, but it isn't handled effectively. The characters utterly fail as vessels for this theme, and the few moments where Brand actually has something meaningful to say are so lacking in subtlety that it's a little bit sad. I feel like What We All Long For is one of those books that became a critical darling simply because it panders to identity politics.
Anyways, on to the characters:
1. Tuyen. An in-your-face lesbian artist who is described as "petulant" in almost ever chapter she appears in. But really she's just a bitch. Her parents and two older sisters immigrated from Vietnam, but since Tuyen was born in Canada she wants to distance herself from her family and culture...yet she decides to make art about her culture. I don't know why I constantly make the mistake of reading novels about "artists," because their work and success is always so unbelievable. Not that Tuyen is very successful, but she still seems more successful than she ought to be. Another thing that bothered me a lot—and I know this is nitpicky—is that her apartment is a tiny, messy shithole that's full of bulky materials for her installation (also: bags of potatoes), yet after 250 pages, we learn she has a FUCKING DARKROOM in there too, just because she needs to develop her photos at 2 a.m. as a plot point. Okaaaay.
2. Carla. Half Italian, half black. Doesn't have much of a personality due to childhood trauma (her mom committed suicide by jumping off their apartment's balcony, leaving Carla to take care of her infant brother, Jamal). She feels obligated to spend her life making sure Jamal is okay...which means constantly bailing him out of jail, despite her pitiful bicycle courier's wage. But Jamal is totally not an asshole at all, the police just hate black people. And he never had a father figure! Try not to roll your eyes at this walking stereotype. Eventually we learn that Carla's mom was "the other woman." I'm not sure how I feel about this, because Brand did a good job at humanizing her. But Carla's life and family seem to be a big cliche sob story. Carla is also Tuyen's neighbour/love interest.
3. Oku. Black dude. Dropped out of university. Trying to live an honest life but doesn't really know what to do with himself. Doesn't respect his family, but is the only character who seems to embrace his culture, as seen in his love of cooking Jamaican food and listening to old jazz.
4. Jackie. She's black (?). Shows how much love Brand gives to her. Honestly, it's not really fair to call Jackie a major character. She exists to be the love interest for Oku. The majority of her chapters actually focus on her parents and how fucking glamourous they are...or at least, they thought they were. Despite being poor, they managed to spend most of their time showing off at nightclubs. The only other notable thing about Jackie is that she has a German boyfriend (but he's an underground musician, so he's totally counter-culture and fits in great with these people who feel rejected by society).
5. Quy. Tuyen's long-lost brother. When he was a child he accidentally ended up on the wrong boat and spent a lot of time at a refugee camp in Malaysia. At first I liked Quy's chapters because his style is different than the others. He's blunt and cynical, yet understands how much everyone idealizes him as someone who should be a grateful refugee, full of potential. He's opportunistic and does what he has to in order to survive. He's done some bad things but ultimately we don't learn how his story ends. He's a welcome relief to the four assholes from Toronto, and acts as a foil because he doesn't have any sense of family, home, culture, or identity.
I cannot emphasize enough how much of an absolute tease and WASTE OF TIME this book is. I was expecting something a lot different based on the synopsis. The chapters switch too much between the five characters. I expected it to be Tuyen's story (and maybe Quy's), but instead we have to watch those three other deadweights come to terms with their broken childhoods. I know, I know, I'm "privileged" and I should be more sensitive to the very real struggles that are described in What We All Long For. But really, I blame the author for making me not care. Her characters are flat, stereotypical, and have no strong traits aside from their "otherness."
I almost forgot: here's a summary of the book in case I ever wonder why the fuck I bothered to pick it up in the first place.
First 270 pages: Boring drama in Tuyen & co.'s lives, with a few glimpses into Quy's life as a refugee.
Actual plot (last 50 pages): Binh (Tuyen's older brother) manages to find Quy and bring him to Toronto. He feels like this will magically fix his broken family, especially his mom and dad who have never gotten over the grief of losing him. Tuyen happens to see them in Koreatown and sneakily takes a picture that ends up haunting her. She confronts Binh and meets Quy, whom she instantly distrusts and believes to be evil. They agree to go to their parents' house for dinner and introduce them to Quy.
Meanwhile, Jamal is out of jail! Carla flipped out on her father for being a terrible dad who should show more responsibility for Jamal. His wife, Nadine, gives him an ultimatum, so he bails Jamal out. Jamal is partying at Carla's when Tuyen returns home to dress up for the big family dinner. Carla wants her to join the party but Tuyen repeatedly says she's going to see her family. Jamal is like "O rly? I hear your brother has a sweet car!" and then proceeds to go to Tuyen's family's neighbourhood in order to steal Binh's Beamer X5. Quy is waiting in the car. Jamal and his thug Somali friend beat the shit of him. THE END.
This book is a chore to read. At first I was somewhat intrigued because I like Brand's style and because the story seemed to have potential (but whoever wrote the synopsis is a goddamn filthy liar). I got discouraged as I neared the hundred-page mark and no plot seemed to surface. I didn't want to read more than one or two chapters a day...some days I didn't even pick up the book at all.
There are two major issues with the book, which are bad enough as it is, but put together they have a multiplier effect that makes the book 10x worse than it should be: 1) The book is 95% character, 4% theme, and 1% plot; 2) THE CHARACTERS ARE HORRIBLE, TWO-DIMENSIONAL TRASH.
So there are five "major" characters in the book. Four of them met in high school and are now twenty-something bohemian POC living in seedy parts of Toronto. I get that Brand is a POC herself, but the way she writes about it is so uncompelling. One of the main themes of the novel is identity/belonging, but it isn't handled effectively. The characters utterly fail as vessels for this theme, and the few moments where Brand actually has something meaningful to say are so lacking in subtlety that it's a little bit sad. I feel like What We All Long For is one of those books that became a critical darling simply because it panders to identity politics.
Anyways, on to the characters:
1. Tuyen. An in-your-face lesbian artist who is described as "petulant" in almost ever chapter she appears in. But really she's just a bitch. Her parents and two older sisters immigrated from Vietnam, but since Tuyen was born in Canada she wants to distance herself from her family and culture...yet she decides to make art about her culture. I don't know why I constantly make the mistake of reading novels about "artists," because their work and success is always so unbelievable. Not that Tuyen is very successful, but she still seems more successful than she ought to be. Another thing that bothered me a lot—and I know this is nitpicky—is that her apartment is a tiny, messy shithole that's full of bulky materials for her installation (also: bags of potatoes), yet after 250 pages, we learn she has a FUCKING DARKROOM in there too, just because she needs to develop her photos at 2 a.m. as a plot point. Okaaaay.
2. Carla. Half Italian, half black. Doesn't have much of a personality due to childhood trauma (her mom committed suicide by jumping off their apartment's balcony, leaving Carla to take care of her infant brother, Jamal). She feels obligated to spend her life making sure Jamal is okay...which means constantly bailing him out of jail, despite her pitiful bicycle courier's wage. But Jamal is totally not an asshole at all, the police just hate black people. And he never had a father figure! Try not to roll your eyes at this walking stereotype. Eventually we learn that Carla's mom was "the other woman." I'm not sure how I feel about this, because Brand did a good job at humanizing her. But Carla's life and family seem to be a big cliche sob story. Carla is also Tuyen's neighbour/love interest.
3. Oku. Black dude. Dropped out of university. Trying to live an honest life but doesn't really know what to do with himself. Doesn't respect his family, but is the only character who seems to embrace his culture, as seen in his love of cooking Jamaican food and listening to old jazz.
4. Jackie. She's black (?). Shows how much love Brand gives to her. Honestly, it's not really fair to call Jackie a major character. She exists to be the love interest for Oku. The majority of her chapters actually focus on her parents and how fucking glamourous they are...or at least, they thought they were. Despite being poor, they managed to spend most of their time showing off at nightclubs. The only other notable thing about Jackie is that she has a German boyfriend (but he's an underground musician, so he's totally counter-culture and fits in great with these people who feel rejected by society).
5. Quy. Tuyen's long-lost brother. When he was a child he accidentally ended up on the wrong boat and spent a lot of time at a refugee camp in Malaysia. At first I liked Quy's chapters because his style is different than the others. He's blunt and cynical, yet understands how much everyone idealizes him as someone who should be a grateful refugee, full of potential. He's opportunistic and does what he has to in order to survive. He's done some bad things but ultimately we don't learn how his story ends. He's a welcome relief to the four assholes from Toronto, and acts as a foil because he doesn't have any sense of family, home, culture, or identity.
I cannot emphasize enough how much of an absolute tease and WASTE OF TIME this book is. I was expecting something a lot different based on the synopsis. The chapters switch too much between the five characters. I expected it to be Tuyen's story (and maybe Quy's), but instead we have to watch those three other deadweights come to terms with their broken childhoods. I know, I know, I'm "privileged" and I should be more sensitive to the very real struggles that are described in What We All Long For. But really, I blame the author for making me not care. Her characters are flat, stereotypical, and have no strong traits aside from their "otherness."
I almost forgot: here's a summary of the book in case I ever wonder why the fuck I bothered to pick it up in the first place.
First 270 pages: Boring drama in Tuyen & co.'s lives, with a few glimpses into Quy's life as a refugee.
Actual plot (last 50 pages): Binh (Tuyen's older brother) manages to find Quy and bring him to Toronto. He feels like this will magically fix his broken family, especially his mom and dad who have never gotten over the grief of losing him. Tuyen happens to see them in Koreatown and sneakily takes a picture that ends up haunting her. She confronts Binh and meets Quy, whom she instantly distrusts and believes to be evil. They agree to go to their parents' house for dinner and introduce them to Quy.
Meanwhile, Jamal is out of jail! Carla flipped out on her father for being a terrible dad who should show more responsibility for Jamal. His wife, Nadine, gives him an ultimatum, so he bails Jamal out. Jamal is partying at Carla's when Tuyen returns home to dress up for the big family dinner. Carla wants her to join the party but Tuyen repeatedly says she's going to see her family. Jamal is like "O rly? I hear your brother has a sweet car!" and then proceeds to go to Tuyen's family's neighbourhood in order to steal Binh's Beamer X5. Quy is waiting in the car. Jamal and his thug Somali friend beat the shit of him. THE END.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 10, 2023
Eh. I kinda liked it. Crazy plots all over the place many millennial characters.
July 6, 2020
As much as I enjoyed Dionne Brand's writing, there are two issues that I have with this story that, unfortunately turned my reading experience into a huge disappointment. I want to mention ahead though, that the book got me really invested. I can't explain why, but I just wanted to keep reading and find out what's going to happen. Maybe that is why the book's ending frustrated me so much.
1) Quy's storyline: There was a huge buildup to Quy eventually making it to Toronto and then ... nothing. His story segments were heartbreaking, especially because they seem so realistic to me. Out of all the characters, I was most invested in his story. Therefore, I wish the ending would have focused on his integration into his family's new Western life more. The main story, however, does not revolve around him much. At times, I don't understand why Brand included his plot-line at all. It doesn't seem to affect the main story much if Quy exists or not. It also wouldn't change the issue of clashing cultures that seem to be the main topic of the book.
2) Tuyen's predatory behavior: I was incredibly uncomfortable reading about Tuyen's obsession with Carla and her attempts at changing her sexuality. I understand how Tuyen could possibly talk herself into believing that Carla is just unsure about her feelings, and maybe that is true. But that is no excuse to take advantage of a drunk person, even if it doesn't involve intercourse. The way the book brushed over this behavior as if nothing was wrong with it, is unacceptable for me. I don't know what Brand's intend behind this scene was, but it ruined the experience for me. I wasn't able to sympathize with Tuyen and her struggles anymore.
This is my personal opinion about the book. You may have a totally different experience reading this book. Based on just the writing, I can recommend the book. The plot however left a bad taste in my mouth. I believe there are better options out there, if you are interested in fiction about coming to terms with one's cultural identity or the struggles of multicultural communities.
1) Quy's storyline: There was a huge buildup to Quy eventually making it to Toronto and then ... nothing. His story segments were heartbreaking, especially because they seem so realistic to me. Out of all the characters, I was most invested in his story. Therefore, I wish the ending would have focused on his integration into his family's new Western life more. The main story, however, does not revolve around him much. At times, I don't understand why Brand included his plot-line at all. It doesn't seem to affect the main story much if Quy exists or not. It also wouldn't change the issue of clashing cultures that seem to be the main topic of the book.
2) Tuyen's predatory behavior: I was incredibly uncomfortable reading about Tuyen's obsession with Carla and her attempts at changing her sexuality. I understand how Tuyen could possibly talk herself into believing that Carla is just unsure about her feelings, and maybe that is true. But that is no excuse to take advantage of a drunk person, even if it doesn't involve intercourse. The way the book brushed over this behavior as if nothing was wrong with it, is unacceptable for me. I don't know what Brand's intend behind this scene was, but it ruined the experience for me. I wasn't able to sympathize with Tuyen and her struggles anymore.
This is my personal opinion about the book. You may have a totally different experience reading this book. Based on just the writing, I can recommend the book. The plot however left a bad taste in my mouth. I believe there are better options out there, if you are interested in fiction about coming to terms with one's cultural identity or the struggles of multicultural communities.
August 28, 2015
The ending was dumb. I hated Tuyen and Quy was boring. Jamal was awful, and Carla for loving him, likewise. The only interesting characters were Angie, Oku, and Jackie. And only Angie got resolution through Carla. Over 50% of the book was unnecessary details and memories. Harsh critics my ass. Why would you write about such spoiled awful people? Never again.
January 11, 2025
The complex energies of Canada's most diverse city, Toronto, come alive in this ambitious novel about young adults struggling to free themselves from the traumas of their immigrant parents. But the narrative thread, focused loosely on saving lost brothers--one inadvertently left behind years earlier in his parents' chaotic rush to flee Vietnam, the other waiting to be bailed out of jail--meanders almost tediously. Description, dialogue, and action are repetitive, and themes are restated rather than developed. Still, the book invites readers to sense the particular, urgent vibe of a city striving to contain multitudes and all they long for.
March 11, 2023
The only thing I was longing for was this book to be over! Naw I'm just playin with you it made me yearn.
July 26, 2022
Perhaps because this is a book about the experiences of children of immigrants in Toronto in the early 2000s and I am a child of an immigrant that came of age in the city of Toronto in the same decade, it really resonated with me. If you didn't you might not have the same feelings but this book speaks the language of the city.
December 2, 2014
I can imagine a scene in Canada's House of Commons, Stephen Harper or one of his cronies holding this book up as an example of why we need more prisons: "these children of immigrants flooding into our country, what else can we do with them?" The young ones depicted in the novel may not have had the opportunities to "better" themselves from the conservative point of view, and the frequent backstories and family histories woven into the narrative point out how the new-comer parents had a lot to answer for by not assimilating fast enough. Their kids, on the other hand, boldly strive not to follow in their footsteps, and each becomes heroic doing what otherwise looks like slacking off and occasionally mooching off their bewildered families.
Much of the novel tells the story of Toronto, a city I have only been acquainted with for several stop-over hours in total, but it really is anywhere in Canada (or at least seems to be exactly the same situation at my end of the country). I really liked the assessment of anonymity early in the book, as "the big lie of a city" (p. 3) and how this remark is answered by Quy, the only outsider whose first-person narrative often breaks up the cycle of chapters on other people, by the end of the book. Are the daily doings of Tuyen, Oku, Carla and Jackie the illustrations of Quy's adventures in Southeast Asia, like the monk who thinks himself a butterfly's dream? - At least we also get a glimpse at how thuggish these monks can be in their waking lives.
So back to that imagined scene in the House of Common, whoever said it and whatever proof was provided, that person ought to take a moment to read through Brand's book to get the other side of the story. Those immigrants did not come to Canada to be milked of their money and corralled into the poorer neighbourhoods or wealthier, secluded suburbs. Instead, they are filling the empty spaces of the second-largest country with the least percent per capita in the world; less and less "Canadians" with more people denied basic rights of citizens in the already overcrowded prison system.
Much of the novel tells the story of Toronto, a city I have only been acquainted with for several stop-over hours in total, but it really is anywhere in Canada (or at least seems to be exactly the same situation at my end of the country). I really liked the assessment of anonymity early in the book, as "the big lie of a city" (p. 3) and how this remark is answered by Quy, the only outsider whose first-person narrative often breaks up the cycle of chapters on other people, by the end of the book. Are the daily doings of Tuyen, Oku, Carla and Jackie the illustrations of Quy's adventures in Southeast Asia, like the monk who thinks himself a butterfly's dream? - At least we also get a glimpse at how thuggish these monks can be in their waking lives.
So back to that imagined scene in the House of Common, whoever said it and whatever proof was provided, that person ought to take a moment to read through Brand's book to get the other side of the story. Those immigrants did not come to Canada to be milked of their money and corralled into the poorer neighbourhoods or wealthier, secluded suburbs. Instead, they are filling the empty spaces of the second-largest country with the least percent per capita in the world; less and less "Canadians" with more people denied basic rights of citizens in the already overcrowded prison system.
October 3, 2007
A disappointingly uneven portrait of contemporary Toronto. The story follows the interlocking lives of four twenty-something second-generation and traces their daily interactions with an undercurrent of their alienation from their parents.
It’s well enough written, but doesn’t feel real at any level. The title comes from a question that Tuyen, one of the main characters, asks of shoppers when she’s behind the counter – and that one scene illustrates both what’s right and wrong about the book. The feel of the shop, of the neighbourhood and of the shoppers is perfect – but the words that come out of the character’s mouths ring totally false. There’s nothing about the way they talk or they way they think that actually feels like they’re from the right generation or the right place.
Throughout the story there are moments that work perfectly surrounded by dialogue that sounds like nothing any real person would actually say. Another character, Carla, the Italian-Jamaican with the dead mother and the delinquent brother, has a fabulous memory of being a child in a cheap apartment that is a perfect description of how childhood memories feel. But then we hear her thoughts about identity and about her brother and her friends and the artificiality jumps to the forefront again.
It’s well enough written, but doesn’t feel real at any level. The title comes from a question that Tuyen, one of the main characters, asks of shoppers when she’s behind the counter – and that one scene illustrates both what’s right and wrong about the book. The feel of the shop, of the neighbourhood and of the shoppers is perfect – but the words that come out of the character’s mouths ring totally false. There’s nothing about the way they talk or they way they think that actually feels like they’re from the right generation or the right place.
Throughout the story there are moments that work perfectly surrounded by dialogue that sounds like nothing any real person would actually say. Another character, Carla, the Italian-Jamaican with the dead mother and the delinquent brother, has a fabulous memory of being a child in a cheap apartment that is a perfect description of how childhood memories feel. But then we hear her thoughts about identity and about her brother and her friends and the artificiality jumps to the forefront again.
August 7, 2019
(2.5 stars)
The story was not at all what I expected from reading the synopsis. I was expecting more about Quy and I expected him to arrive, you know, a little earlier in the book. And the synopsis says his arrival would affect Tuyen and her friends but I did not get any of that. He arrived in Toronto LITERALLY right at the end. The synopsis makes it seem like I would hear more about Tuyen and how her story goes but I did not get enough of her. The story did not seem to be moving forward-if that makes sense. It was just them going over their emotions and telling their heartaches etc. I was pretty okay reading about each character's perspective but I was still quite disappointed because I was waiting to read more about what happens when Quy arrives in Toronto and what the family reunion is like etc. And I would have liked to hear more from Quy's perspective throughout the book when he was in Thailand but there were only very few chapters on his story.
I also was not expecting the ending at all. That was such a twist. Did not like that it ended that way though.
The story was not at all what I expected from reading the synopsis. I was expecting more about Quy and I expected him to arrive, you know, a little earlier in the book. And the synopsis says his arrival would affect Tuyen and her friends but I did not get any of that. He arrived in Toronto LITERALLY right at the end. The synopsis makes it seem like I would hear more about Tuyen and how her story goes but I did not get enough of her. The story did not seem to be moving forward-if that makes sense. It was just them going over their emotions and telling their heartaches etc. I was pretty okay reading about each character's perspective but I was still quite disappointed because I was waiting to read more about what happens when Quy arrives in Toronto and what the family reunion is like etc. And I would have liked to hear more from Quy's perspective throughout the book when he was in Thailand but there were only very few chapters on his story.
I also was not expecting the ending at all. That was such a twist. Did not like that it ended that way though.
April 15, 2013
Canadian author Dionne Brand is woefully overlooked in the US. She is a celebrated poet, but has published three novels. Her last novel What We All Long For is a lament about contemporary Toronto. In Brand’s hands, the widely heralded diversity of the Canadian metropolis gets fragmented into a series of richly observed life stories. As the title indicates, a web of desires so complex, enough even to render Freud mute, binds the characters to one another. However, it is the very yoking of these characters together through unrequited desires that gives them a bit of what they want: human connection. The Canadian press lauded this as Brand’s most “accessible” work. I hate that term for its inability to say anything about writing, or any other medium. The writing here is not as overtly poetic as that in her previous novels, but Brand is still giving us something dense and layered to unpack.
June 23, 2009
This acclaimed novel was a severe disappointment. More because it began with the most beautiful character sketches I have read in quite a while. I was dazzled. But then it stopped. Completely. Like a different author started writing. I couldn't even finish it. So sad. Don't bother to read past the first third. Well since I didn't finish it maybe I'll try to read it backwards and see if the middle was just the deathtrap and not the whole thing.
November 26, 2018
Very complex and powerful depictions and interweaving of the characters. The inner workings of the characters are as insightful as the portrayal of Toronto is poetic. I found it a bit slow at times perhaps due to lack of a clear narrative arc, but the ending got me in the end. Also a little bit uncertain about the ways some of the characters' obsessions with each other seems to push past healthy consent in an unquestioned way. Definitely nice to read if missing Toronto though.
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February 13, 2020DNF @ page 94.
April 15, 2022
I think this novel trauma-dumped onto me.
March 30, 2016
I've been impatient with this book, wanting it to be over, frustrated with the differences and similarities between the lives of the women (whose mother? Whose brother?), and yet now that it's almost over, I want it to go on. How now, when things are being resolved, can she end it? When Quy (the interloper, the crook, the ghost) has just returned. Or has he? And I've learned some important things, listened to Jazz (Ornette Coleman - The Jungle Is a Skyscraper) and pinned tons of Remedios Varo, OMG, she's phenomenal, surrealist female painter and I'd never heard of her or seen her magickal paintings. Amazing.
Here is my pain, my blame, my sin:
"You can't resent children for long. Or at least Nadine couldn't..."
So much of Toronto and the poverty and difference in neighbourhoods is in here. The beautification is a lovely thing, the way Brand argues for beauty, to help lift up, to give hope, and how Jackie makes it so, even though it does not exist:
"Jackie heard all this when her mother and father were trying to keep their arguing low and when they were so mad they didn't care to spare her. Between her parents and Vanauley Way, she wondered what she was going to do. She did them all a favour by making a plan. If the city didn't have the good grace to plant a shrub or two, she would cultivate it with her own trees and flowers. And so she did. In her mind.
Every day she walked down paths of magnolia trees and lilac bushes; wisteria hung over the arbour and doorway of 113 1/2. In the spring she walked around complimenting the tulips: the parrots, the Rembrandts, the triumphs, the double early, the viridiflora, the double late, the hummingbird, the clusiana..."
I remember the demonstration in Quebec as well, and this brings some of it back. I remember watching the night before on tv at Kathryn and Jim's, and then leaving in the early hours, Beverly staying behind 9she couldn't risk being arrested, so she said, coward), Jen Gal and her partner Ian, the tear gas, the migraine coming back the next day, all of it for my place in the demonstration, my desire to be there, and here's Brand's story (so good):
"Tuyen was clicking away with her camera throughout the whole thing [Oku's arrest]. She was going to use the photographs for an installation called RIOT> She photographed the legs of the policemen on horseback as the horses skittered toward the crowd, planning to title it "Dance." She may have lost Oku when she stopped to photograph the arc of a tear-gas canister, broken glass, and police shoes--she would call this photograph "Overkill." Oku yelled to her for help, but she didn't hear him; she saw him as she saw everything, as she imagined."
This is great as she describes Jackie's parents and their connection to the clubs, and what buildings are, how they reincarnate and we do too. It also reminds me of my parent's lives. What did they have that does not exist any longer. Is that what I should be talking to Dad about at lunches?:
"How does life disappear like that? It does it all the time in a city. One moment a corner is a certain grocer, gorgeous with your desires, then it disappears under the constant construction of this and that. A bank flounders into a pizza shop, then into an abandoned building with boarding and graffiti, than after weeks of you passing it by, not noticing the infinitesimal changes, it springs to life as an exclusive condo. This liquor store that was the Paramount will probably, unnoticed, do the same thing in three or four years, and the good times Jackie's mother and father had there--the nights when nights weren't long enough, when they all ended up at a blind pig on St. Clair Avenue because they couldn't go to sleep with so much lighting up their beautiful bodies, or at a Fran's on College, eating greasy eggs at three or four in the morning--all this, their lovely life, and they would not be able to convince anyone it had existed."
I have wanted to read Dionne Brand for a long time, and I expected her to be more... academic somehow. But it's political, real time, young people who are on the margins dealing with like in a white Toronto, a multi-racial Toronto, a place where being white is just one thing. But it's good, and simple all at the same time. Oh, and sometimes polemic. It is too political and the story suffers at time, or maybe the narration.
Thus, it BEGINS.
"THIS CITY HOVERS above the forty-ninth parallel; that's illusory of course. Winters on the other hand, there's nothing vague about them. Winters here are inevitable, sometimes unforgiving. Two years ago, they had to bring the army in to dig the city out from under the snow. The streets were glacial, the electrical wires were brittle, the telephones were useless. The whole city stood still; the trees more than usual. The cars and driveways were obliterated. Politicians were falling over each other to explain what had happened and who was to blame—who had privatized the snow plows and why the city wasn't prepared. The truth is you can't prepare for something like that. It's fate. Nature will do that sort of thing—dump thousands of tons of snow on the city just to say, Don't make too many plans or assumptions, don't get ahead of yourself. Spring this year couldn't come too soon—and it didn't. It took its time—melting at its own pace, over running ice-blocked sewer drains, swelling the Humber River and the Don River stretching to the lake. The sound of the city was of trickling water."
August 8, 2021
Really liked this up until the ending. These were some great flawed stubborn young characters, often aware of their own shortcomings but not ready to overcome them, with this constant tension simmering between them and their friends and their parents. Each chapter felt like a lyrical short story with its own arc about a different part of the city, a different family struggling to find their place in it. The stories about Jackie's parents and Carla's memories of Angie were especially well done.
I got to the end hoping for maybe one more chapter about Oku and Jackie, but instead of giving them some resolution the book goes for the "unexpected encounter that will forever alter the lives of Tuyen and her friends" that the back cover copy promises. It felt like a quiet, deep character study that decided it was supposed to be a thriller at the last minute and quickly slapped something together. It had been building all this tension in terms of family relationships and self-identity, which absolutely did not work as building tension toward kind of a random event.
I got to the end hoping for maybe one more chapter about Oku and Jackie, but instead of giving them some resolution the book goes for the "unexpected encounter that will forever alter the lives of Tuyen and her friends" that the back cover copy promises. It felt like a quiet, deep character study that decided it was supposed to be a thriller at the last minute and quickly slapped something together. It had been building all this tension in terms of family relationships and self-identity, which absolutely did not work as building tension toward kind of a random event.
October 29, 2025
"but to be held at all by her, by her eyes was thrilling- it was to be held as if by her body. she hadn't laid a finger on him, yet he knew this is what it would be like to touch her again. to be held in some knowledge she had, some substance that was tangy"
this book has some really good quotes and I was really immersed in some parts, but other times it veered off too far that it became uninteresting. i think it would have benefitted from being shorter.
this book has some really good quotes and I was really immersed in some parts, but other times it veered off too far that it became uninteresting. i think it would have benefitted from being shorter.
April 14, 2024
I had to read this for my degree and it was not my fav. It was a cool story with a good concept, but I supposed the information I was looking for in my paper were hard to find throughout the book, so it made the book difficult to enjoy.
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