What do you think?
Rate this book
What We All Want
In Michelle Berry’s darkly funny and poignant first novel, three siblings come together to arrange the funeral of their mother, Becka, who has died after a struggle with liver cancer. Yet Hilary, Thomas and Billy can’t agree on a plan of action. Grief, and having to deal with one another in the difficult surroundings of their childhood home, has brought to the fore all their fears and insecurities. Besides, they are a strange trio.
Hilary put her life on hold to care for their agoraphobic mother who had never recovered from the fact that her husband had walked out. With only dolls for company, Hilary grows more and more eccentric, collecting jars of preserves and carefully laying rocks all over the hardwood of the living room floor so it feels like a beach. She seems both naïve and wise about the world. But, for her, life away from the house is unimaginable.
Billy isn’t sure when his life took a wrong turn. He doesn’t remember having childhood He hung out with Tess, and then he married her, and now all Tess cares about is food. Meanwhile their seventeen-year-old anorexic daughter is pregnant and won’t tell them who the father is. Billy relies on the bottle to get him through life’s quiet disappointments. Afraid to tell anyone he’s lost two jobs because of his drinking, he pins all his hopes on his share of the proceeds from the sale of his mother’s house.
Thomas moved to the other side of the country as soon as he could, and though he sent money regularly, his fear of flying has been a good excuse not to visit for sixteen years. Successful, handsome, of sophisticated tastes, he nevertheless hasn’t found the courage to tell his family that he is gay and in a long-term relationship. Thomas feels guilt over having helped his family so little, but is anxious to put the past back in its box and continue his perfect life.
As the three argue over what should be done with the house and with their mother, Becka silently awaits burial at the Mortimer’s Funeral Home. Dick Mortimer was Hilary’s childhood sweetheart. Now overweight and lonely and smelling faintly of formaldehyde, Dick is somewhat flustered to see Hilary again in the funeral home where they used to sneak around among the coffins. As the two begin to see in one another a faint possibility of a new life, Hilary reveals an outrageous plan for where Becka should be buried. Eventually they all reluctantly agree to hold the most unusual backyard party the suburbs have ever seen.
While touching on the darkness of emotional loss — heightened by an incident of necrophilia, a near miscarriage, a heart attack and all the macabre details of preparing corpses for burial — the story keeps tragedy at bay with a healthy dose of dark humour. In the end, the novel seems to say, it is the enforced connection of the family, however dysfunctional, that will bring us a little bit closer to what we all want. Full of wit, understanding and compassion, What We All Want explores the nature of family, love and relationships in a narrative that’s impossible to put down — and may make you feel a lot better about your own family.
Hilary put her life on hold to care for their agoraphobic mother who had never recovered from the fact that her husband had walked out. With only dolls for company, Hilary grows more and more eccentric, collecting jars of preserves and carefully laying rocks all over the hardwood of the living room floor so it feels like a beach. She seems both naïve and wise about the world. But, for her, life away from the house is unimaginable.
Billy isn’t sure when his life took a wrong turn. He doesn’t remember having childhood He hung out with Tess, and then he married her, and now all Tess cares about is food. Meanwhile their seventeen-year-old anorexic daughter is pregnant and won’t tell them who the father is. Billy relies on the bottle to get him through life’s quiet disappointments. Afraid to tell anyone he’s lost two jobs because of his drinking, he pins all his hopes on his share of the proceeds from the sale of his mother’s house.
Thomas moved to the other side of the country as soon as he could, and though he sent money regularly, his fear of flying has been a good excuse not to visit for sixteen years. Successful, handsome, of sophisticated tastes, he nevertheless hasn’t found the courage to tell his family that he is gay and in a long-term relationship. Thomas feels guilt over having helped his family so little, but is anxious to put the past back in its box and continue his perfect life.
As the three argue over what should be done with the house and with their mother, Becka silently awaits burial at the Mortimer’s Funeral Home. Dick Mortimer was Hilary’s childhood sweetheart. Now overweight and lonely and smelling faintly of formaldehyde, Dick is somewhat flustered to see Hilary again in the funeral home where they used to sneak around among the coffins. As the two begin to see in one another a faint possibility of a new life, Hilary reveals an outrageous plan for where Becka should be buried. Eventually they all reluctantly agree to hold the most unusual backyard party the suburbs have ever seen.
While touching on the darkness of emotional loss — heightened by an incident of necrophilia, a near miscarriage, a heart attack and all the macabre details of preparing corpses for burial — the story keeps tragedy at bay with a healthy dose of dark humour. In the end, the novel seems to say, it is the enforced connection of the family, however dysfunctional, that will bring us a little bit closer to what we all want. Full of wit, understanding and compassion, What We All Want explores the nature of family, love and relationships in a narrative that’s impossible to put down — and may make you feel a lot better about your own family.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 6, 2020
Michelle Berry has succeeded in accomplishing what first-time novelists inevitably strive for in her debut novel entitled What We All Want, and she does it in a risky fashion, making the accomplishment all the more noteworthy.
What do we anticipate when we pick up our next read? A good story? Granted. But ultimately the novelist’s aim is to draw us into the fictional world she has created, so that in some way we too become ‘players’ of sorts, in the action. On some level, we want to relate to the characters, their particular way of reaching out to others, their various strengths and shortcomings too.
Berry’s characters are anything but conventional. Hilary Mount has transformed her living room into a stone beach, surrounds herself with hundreds of dolls, and is determined to bury her recently deceased mother in her own backyard, where she can keep an eye on her. Dick Mortimer’s life has centred around the funeral business, and we are spared few details of his profession. Berry wants us to know what this business of death is all about. And we may be surprised to find out just how comical the whole undertaking can be (please excuse my inexcusable pun). Thomas Mount left town years ago, and has concealed his gay lover from the family throughout his entire hiatus. Nor does he intend to reveal his sexual preferences to his siblings any time soon. Billy Mount drinks himself into oblivion on a daily basis.
Berry gathers her marginal group of characters together with the ostensible purpose of celebrating the life of the late Mrs. Mount. And in the days leading up to the funeral, we are introduced to and then quickly enveloped by the rather atypical lives of the Mount family. Berry’s great success resides in her ability to enable her reader to recognize at one and the same time the somewhat bizarre behaviours of her characters, together with their innate humanity. Their needs and wants are after all, not so different from our own. Love, death, beauty, redemption. Each of the universal poetic themes is addressed by Berry in this quirky first novel. And all are addressed with a compassion for her characters and their individual flaws.
Berry’s writing style might be described as almost “pared down”. The language she uses is precise and straightforward. No flowery detail or excessive use of adjectives is required to tell her story. The dialogue is realistic, and similarly direct. And yet this apparently simple writing is continually deceiving. For beneath what appears to be a straightforward, and guileless text lies some rather more complicated suggestions to the age-old question: What indeed, do we all want?
What do we anticipate when we pick up our next read? A good story? Granted. But ultimately the novelist’s aim is to draw us into the fictional world she has created, so that in some way we too become ‘players’ of sorts, in the action. On some level, we want to relate to the characters, their particular way of reaching out to others, their various strengths and shortcomings too.
Berry’s characters are anything but conventional. Hilary Mount has transformed her living room into a stone beach, surrounds herself with hundreds of dolls, and is determined to bury her recently deceased mother in her own backyard, where she can keep an eye on her. Dick Mortimer’s life has centred around the funeral business, and we are spared few details of his profession. Berry wants us to know what this business of death is all about. And we may be surprised to find out just how comical the whole undertaking can be (please excuse my inexcusable pun). Thomas Mount left town years ago, and has concealed his gay lover from the family throughout his entire hiatus. Nor does he intend to reveal his sexual preferences to his siblings any time soon. Billy Mount drinks himself into oblivion on a daily basis.
Berry gathers her marginal group of characters together with the ostensible purpose of celebrating the life of the late Mrs. Mount. And in the days leading up to the funeral, we are introduced to and then quickly enveloped by the rather atypical lives of the Mount family. Berry’s great success resides in her ability to enable her reader to recognize at one and the same time the somewhat bizarre behaviours of her characters, together with their innate humanity. Their needs and wants are after all, not so different from our own. Love, death, beauty, redemption. Each of the universal poetic themes is addressed by Berry in this quirky first novel. And all are addressed with a compassion for her characters and their individual flaws.
Berry’s writing style might be described as almost “pared down”. The language she uses is precise and straightforward. No flowery detail or excessive use of adjectives is required to tell her story. The dialogue is realistic, and similarly direct. And yet this apparently simple writing is continually deceiving. For beneath what appears to be a straightforward, and guileless text lies some rather more complicated suggestions to the age-old question: What indeed, do we all want?
March 29, 2013
A lovely quirky, yet meaningful story...like a Canadian Anne Tyler. Mom has died and now Hilary can summon her brothers home. Billy, who has lost his two jobs and has a problem with alcohol. His wife Tess is addicted to food and his 17-year-old daughter Sue is pregnant and won't or can't say who the father is. Thomas who hasn't been home in over 15 years and is afraid of flying. Thomas has another secret, he has been having a relationship with a man for 15 years and hasn't let on. And, then there is Hilary's connection with the Funeral Director, who was her best friend in school. With the room-to-room dolls, preserves and pebbles on the floor in the living room, What We All Want will capture both your attention and your heart.
June 16, 2009
Enjoyed this book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews