All We Ever Wanted
$19.95
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Description
A Penguin Book Club Pick
The thrilling novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of First Comes Love raises the daunting question: In the midst of a scandal that threatens a perfect life, how far are you willing to go to protect the ones you love?
Nina Browning married a third-generation Nashvillian, enjoys a newly lavish lifestyle thanks to the sudden success of her husband’s tech business and has a son, Finch, who just got accepted to Princeton.
Thomas Talone is a single dad, works multiple jobs and has a daughter, Lyla, who was recently accepted to Nashville’s most prestigious private high school on a scholarship.
They couldn’t be prouder.
Then scandal strikes, and the worlds of these very different families collide. Lyla passes out at a party, drunk and half-naked. Finch snaps a picture, types out a caption and click—sends it out to a few friends. The photo spreads quickly, and soon heated reactions bubble throughout the already-divided community. Before long, the families find themselves in the midst of an ethical war as their community takes sides, throws blame and implodes. The gray area between right and wrong grows thick, and Nina and Tom are forced to question every assumption they’ve held about love and family loyalty. Emily Giffin tells a riveting story of characters who face impossible choices—but emerge to live a life truer to themselves than they ever had before.National Bestseller
A New York Times Bestseller
A Goodreads Best Fiction Book of the Year
“A gripping, thought-provoking journey.”
—Jodi Picoult
“Page-turning. . . . Timely and thought-provoking, it’s Giffin’s best yet.”
—People
“Stellar. . . . Giffin’s plot touches on social class and misogyny while delivering an excellent page-turning story. This satisfying novel will appeal to readers looking for a nuanced, thoughtful take on family and social dynamics.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“One of Giffin’s most topical, gripping books yet.”
—Good Housekeeping
“A page-turning exploration of wealth and privilege.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“All We Ever Wanted is a prescient read for our time.”
—Toronto Star
“There are losses in All We Ever Wanted, but there are also gains, and not the ones you might expect. Giffin’s novel has style and substance—a worthy addition to your summer reading stack.”
—The Washington Post
“Emily Giffin at her best.”
—Waterloo Region Record
“A compelling portrait of a woman facing the difficult limits of love.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“If you’re looking for a book about romance, single parenthood, race, gender injustice, lost love or high-class privilege, this novel is for you.”
—Associated Press
“Dealing with issues of class, money and race, All We Ever Wanted is the book everyone will be talking about.”
—PopSugar
“Giffin is a worldwide best-selling author because she gets under your skin—by creating relatable characters wrestling within believable situations. . . . Giffin crafts an unpredictable page-turner that unfolds in the voices of three superbly distinct characters. . . . Her latest . . . is destined for greatness.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Giffin draws the reader in like few storytellers can. . . . Deeply moving.”
—BookPage
“Riveting and poignant, Emily Giffin’s latest novel paints an impossible dilemma that will make readers ponder hard questions about loyalty and love. I was captivated by every page.”
—Harlan Coben
“An immensely thoughtful and emotionally wrenching story. I think it’s wonderful.”
—Sophie Kinsella
“A timely and absorbing portrait of the complexities of modern life. This is Emily Giffin at her very best.”
—Kristin Hannah
“A compelling, fascinating story told through blue-ribbon dialogue and the dual gifts of intelligence and goodness. I loved this novel.”
—Elinor LipmanEMILY GIFFIN is the author of eleven internationally bestselling novels: Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Baby Proof, Love the One You’re With, Heart of the Matter, Where We Belong, The One & Only, First Comes Love, All We Ever Wanted, The Lies That Bind and Meant to Be. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and three children
1. Discuss the title, All We Ever Wanted. How do you think it relates to the overall story? How does it apply to each of the characters in the book?
2. Both Nina and Kirk have very different ideas about what the “right path” is for Finch. How do you think each parent justifies their actions?
3. Tom is furious about the transgression against his daughter, and believes she deserves justice. How do Tom’s responsibilities as a parent come into conflict with the ethics of respecting Lyla’s wishes?
4. As the book progresses, Nina finds herself siding with Tom’s values rather than her husband’s. Do you feel that Nina is betraying her family by aligning with Tom? Is she betraying herself if she does not stick to her beliefs? Whom does she owe her loyalty to more?
5. In chapter eleven, Melanie tells Nina that it’s a mother’s responsibility to stand by her child “no matter what.” Do you agree with this assertion?
6. Why do you think Lyla is so willing to trust and even begin dating Finch? As you were reading, did you believe Finch’s claim that Polly stole his phone and took the picture of Lyla? If so, was there a point at which you began to doubt Finch?
7. Discuss the ways in which Tom’s and Nina’s pasts inform the way they live their lives in the present. Do you believe they were/are living their best lives?
8. This book poses the question of what lengths one should go to in order to protect one’s family versus preserve one’s values. What would you have done in Nina’s position? In Tom’s?
9. In the epilogue, Lyla tells Finch that Nina “saved” them both. What do you think she means? Do you believe this is an accurate statement?
10. If you could write subsequent chapters for this book, how do you imagine the relationship between Tom, Nina, Lyla, Finch, and Kirk playing out?
chapter one
NINA
It started out as a typical Saturday night. And by typical, I don’t mean normal in any mainstream American way. There was no grilling out with the neighbors or going to the movies or doing any of the things I did as a kid. It was simply typical for what we’d become since Kirk sold his software company, and we went from comfortable to wealthy. Very wealthy.
Obscene was the description my childhood best friend Julie once used—not about us, but about Melanie, another friend—after Melanie bought herself a diamond Rolex for Mother’s Day and then offhandedly remarked at one of our dinner parties that homemade pottery from her kids “wasn’t going to cut it.”
“She could feed a Syrian refugee camp for an entire year with that watch,” Julie had groused in my kitchen after the other guests had departed. “It’s obscene.”
I’d nodded noncommittally, hiding my own Cartier under the edge of our marble island, as I silently reassured myself with all the ways my watch, and therefore my life, were different from Melanie’s. For one, I didn’t buy the watch for myself on a whim; Kirk gave it to me for our fifteenth anniversary. For another, I had always loved when our son, Finch, made me presents and cards in his younger years, and was sad that those had become relics of the past.
Most important, I don’t think I ever flaunted our wealth. If anything, it embarrassed me. As a result, Julie didn’t hold our money against me. She didn’t know our exact worth but had a general sense of it, especially after she’d gone house hunting with me when Kirk was too busy, helping me find our home on Belle Meade Boulevard, where we now lived. She and her husband and girls were regular guests at our lake house and our home on Nantucket, just as she happily inherited my gently used designer hand-me-downs.
Occasionally Julie would call Kirk out, though, not for being showy like Melanie but for having elitist tendencies. A fourth-generation silver-spoon Nashvillian, my husband grew up ensconced in a private-school, country-club world, so he’d had some practice at being a snob, even back when his money was merely old, and not yet obscene. In other words, Kirk came from a “good family”—that elusive term that nobody ever came out and defined, yet we all knew was code for having old money and a certain well-bred, refined taste. As in: he’s a Browning.
My maiden name, Silver, held no such status, not even by the standards of Bristol, the town on the Tennessee-Virginia border where I grew up and Julie still lived. We were no slouches—my dad wrote for the Bristol Herald Courier and my mom was a fourth-grade teacher—but we were squarely middle class, and our idea of living large was everyone ordering dessert at a nonchain restaurant. Looking back, I wonder if that may have explained my mom’s preoccupation with money. It wasn’t that she was impressed with it, but she could always tell you who had it and who did not, who was cheap and who was living beyond their means. Then again, my mom could pretty much tell you anything about anyone in Bristol. She wasn’t a gossip—at least not a mean-spirited one—she was simply fascinated by other people’s business, from their wealth and health to their politics and religion.
Incidentally, my dad is Jewish and my mother Methodist. Live and let live is their mantra, an outlook that was passed on to both my brother, Max, and me, the two of us embracing the more attractive elements of each religion, like Santa Claus and Seders, while punting Jewish guilt and Christian judgment. This was a good thing, especially for Max, who came out during college. My parents didn’t miss a beat. If anything, they seemed more uncomfortable with Kirk’s money than with my brother’s sexuality, at least when we first began to date. My mother had insisted that she was just sad I wouldn’t be getting back together with Teddy, my high school boyfriend, whom she adored, but I sometimes sensed a slight inferiority complex, and her worry that the Brownings were somehow looking down on me and my family.
To be fair, a half-Jewish girl from Bristol with a gay brother and no trust fund probably wasn’t their first choice for their only child. Hell, I probably wasn’t Kirk’s first choice on paper, either. But what can I say? He picked me anyway. I’d always told myself that he fell in love with my personality—with me—the same way I fell in love with him. But in the past couple of years I had begun to wonder about both of us, and what had brought us together in college.
I had to admit that when discussing our relationship, Kirk often referenced my looks. He always had. So I’d be naïve to think that my appearance had nothing to do with why we were together—just as I knew, deep down, that the patina and security of a “good family” had, in part, attracted me to him.
I hated everything about that admission, but it was definitely on my mind that Saturday night as Kirk and I took an Uber to the Hermitage Hotel for about our fifth gala of the year. We had become that couple, I remember thinking in the back of that black Lincoln Town Car—the husband and wife in an Armani tux and a Dior gown who were barely speaking. Something was off in our relationship. Was it the money? Had Kirk become too obsessed with it? Had I somehow lost myself as Finch grew older and I spent less time mothering him and more time in the role of full-time philanthropist?
I thought about one of my dad’s recent remarks, asking why my friends and I didn’t just skip the galas—and give all the money to charity. My mom had chimed in that we might be able to accomplish “more meaningful work in blue jeans than black tie.” I had gotten defensive, reminding them that I did that sort of hands-on work, too, such as the hours I spent every month answering calls on Nashville’s suicide helpline. Of course I hadn’t admitted to my parents that Kirk sometimes minimized that kind of volunteering, insisting that I was better off “just writing the check.” In his mind, a donation of dollars always trumped time; the fact that it came with more splash and credit was beside the point.
Kirk was a good man, I told myself now, as I watched him take a swallow of the bourbon roadie that he’d poured into a red Solo cup. I was being too hard on him. On both of us.
“You look fabulous,” he suddenly said, looking over at me, softening me further. “That dress is incredible.”
“Thanks, honey,” I said in a low voice.
“I can’t wait to take it off you,” he whispered, so the driver wouldn’t hear him. He gave me a seductive look, then took another drink.
I smiled, thinking that it had been a while, and resisted the urge to tell him that he might want to slow down on the booze. Kirk didn’t have a drinking problem, but it was a rare night that he didn’t at least catch a red-wine buzz. Maybe that was it, I thought. We definitely both needed to ease up on our social calendars. Be less distracted. More present. Maybe that would come when Finch went to college in the fall.
“So. Who have you told? About Princeton?” he asked, clearly thinking about Finch, too, and the acceptance letter he’d just received the day before.
“Other than family, only Julie and Melanie,” I said. “What about you?”
“Just the guys in my foursome today,” he said, rattling off the names of his usual golf buddies. “I didn’t want to brag . . . but I couldn’t help myself.”
His expression mirrored the way I felt—a mix of pride and disbelief. Finch was a good student, and had gotten into Vanderbilt and Virginia earlier that winter. But Princeton had been a long shot, and his admittance felt like a culmination and validation of so many parenting decisions, beginning with applying Finch to Windsor Academy, the most rigorous and prestigious private school in Nashville, when he was only five years old. Since then, we had always prioritized our son’s education, hiring private tutors when needed, exposing him to the arts, and taking him to virtually every corner of the globe. Over the past three summers, we had sent him on a service trip to Ecuador, to a cycling camp in France, and on a marine biology course in the Galápagos Islands. I recognized, of course, that we were at a distinct financial advantage over so many other applicants, and something about that (especially the check we’d written to Princeton’s endowment) made me feel a little guilty. But I told myself that money alone couldn’t gain a kid admission to the Ivy League. Finch had worked hard, and I was so proud of him.
Focus on that, I told myself. Focus on the positive.
Kirk was looking at his phone again, so I pulled mine out, too, checking Instagram. Finch’s girlfriend, Polly, had just posted a photo of the two of them, the caption reading: We’re both Tigers, y’all! Clemson and Princeton, here we come! I showed the picture to Kirk, then read aloud some of the congratulatory comments from children of our friends who would be in attendance tonight.
“Poor Polly,” Kirk said. “They won’t last a semester.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant the distance between South Carolina and New Jersey or the mere reality of young love, but I murmured my agreement, trying not to think of the condom wrapper that I’d recently found under Finch’s bed. The discovery was far from a surprise, but it still made me sad, thinking of how much he had grown up and changed. He used to be such a little chatterbox, a precocious only child regaling me with every detail of his day. There was nothing I hadn’t known about him, nothing he wouldn’t have shared. But with puberty came an onset of remoteness that never really cleared, and in recent months, we’d talked very little, no matter how hard I tried to break down his barriers. Kirk insisted it was normal, all part of a boy’s preparation to leave the nest. You worry too much, he always told me.
I put my phone back in my bag, sighed, and said, “Are you ready for tonight?”
“Ready for what?” he asked, draining his bourbon as we turned onto Sixth Avenue.
“Our speech?” I said, meaning his speech, though I would be standing beside him, offering him moral support.
Kirk gave me a blank stare. “Speech? Remind me? Which gala is this, again?”
“I hope you’re kidding?”
“It’s hard to keep them all straight—”
I sighed and said, “The Hope Gala, honey.”
“And we are hoping for what, exactly?” he asked with a smirk.
“Suicide awareness and prevention,” I said. “We’re being honored, remember?”
“For what?” he asked, now starting to annoy me.
“The work we did bringing mental health experts to Nashville,” I said, even though we both knew it had much more to do with the fifty-thousand-dollar donation we’d given after a freshman at Windsor took her life last summer. It was too horrible for me to process, even all these months later.
“I’m kidding,” Kirk said, as he reached out to pat my leg. “I’m ready.”
I nodded, thinking that Kirk was always ready. Always on. The most confident, competent man I’d ever known.
A moment later, we pulled up to the hotel. A handsome young valet swung open my door, issuing a brisk welcome. “Will you be checking in tonight, madame?” he asked.
I told him no, we were here for the gala. He nodded, offering me his hand, as I gathered the folds of my black lace gown and stepped onto the sidewalk. Ahead of me, I saw Melanie chatting amid a cluster of friends and acquaintances. The usual crowd. She rushed toward me, giving me air kisses and compliments.
“You look amazing, too. Are those new?” I reached up to her face, my fingertips grazing the most gorgeous chandelier diamond earrings.
“Newly acquired but vintage,” she said. “Latest apology from you know who.”
I smiled and glanced around for her husband. “Where is Todd, anyway?”US
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| Subjects | contemporary romance, saga, social media, Summer reads, ethics, forgiveness, self esteem, Nashville, book club recommendations, beach books, chick lit, relationship books, romance novels, new york times best sellers, summer books for women, social psychology, books best sellers for women, all we ever wanted emily giffin, social problems, romance, women, racism, high school, marriage, relationships, mothers, social justice, happiness, sex, parenting, FIC027020, Friendship, romance books, young adult, Secrets, FIC019000, summer reading, beach reads |
