Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jul 2013
272 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
It's the spring of 1994 in Cooperstown, New York, and Joanie Cole, the beloved matriarch of the Obermeyer family, has unexpectedly died in her sleep. Now, for the first time, three generations are living together under one roof and are quickly encroaching on one another's fragile orbits. Eighty-six-year-old Bob Cole is adrift in his daughter's house without his wife. Anne Obermeyer is increasingly suspicious of her husband, Hugh's, late nights and missed dinners, and Hugh, principal of the town's preschool, is terrified that a scandal at school will erupt and devastate his life. Fifteen-year-old tennis-team hopeful Julia is caught in a love triangle with Sam and Carl, her would-be teammates and two best friends, while her brother, Teddy, the star pitcher of Cooperstown High, will soon catch sight of something that will change his family forever.
At the heart of the Obermeyers' present-day tremors is the scandal of The Sex Cure, a thinly veiled roman à clef from the 1960s, which shook the small village of Cooperstown to the core. When Anne discovers a battered copy underneath her parents' old mattress, the Obermeyers cannot escape the family secrets that come rushing to the surface. With its heartbreaking insight into the messy imperfections of family, love, and growing up, Love All is an irresistible comic story of coming-of-age—at any age.
"A touching character-driven tale…the prose is effortless, and the characters are accessible and genuine, making this a promising debut." - Publishers Weekly
"A quiet snapshot of an average family, Wright's debut novel should appeal to fans of domestic fiction." - Booklist
"Wright's novel is overfreighted yet capable and humane. Inhabiting an appealing if familiar scenario, this is a novel long on empathy but missing the spark of animation." - Kirkus
"I read Callie Wright's splendid debut novel, Love All, with such a delirious swim of recognition that I was both rueful and nostalgic when I finally put the book down. Like Julia, one of the beautifully complicated main characters, I was a young girl in Cooperstown in the early 1990s: I can tell you that this generous, wise writer nailed this story with astonishing and heartfelt aplomb." - Lauren Groff, author of Arcadia and The Monsters of Templeton
"With the power and grace of a strong forehand swing, Love All introduces one of fiction's most endearing families—a family as real as your own. How does Callie Wright manage to make falling in love heartbreaking, and losing the love of your life heartwarming? How does a single week manage to feel as full as a lifetime? That's the magic of this unforgettable debut. If this isn't a Great American Novel, I don't know what is." - Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints
"What makes a novel a mystery even when the reader has finished and the ending is known? How the author managed to get us there, with what seemed like so little maneuvering; how ineffable our emotions remain, even when grounded in the best prose. What an original, enlightening, and humane book Callie Wright's Love All is. And what a good one." - Ann Beattie
"What's most stunning about Wright's stirring, well-wrought debut, is the author's own capaciousness - she has no trouble getting under the skin of her all too human characters, treating young and old, male and female, with a master storyteller's equality of insight." - Helen Schulman, author of This Beautiful Life
This information about Love All was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Callie Wright is a reporter–researcher at Vanity Fair. She graduated from Yale and earned her MFA at the University of Virginia, where she was a Poe/Faulkner Fellow in Creative Writing and won a Raven Society Fellowship. She is the recipient of a Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers and her short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train and The Southern Review. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
The Stone Home
by Crystal Hana Kim
A moving family drama and coming-of-age story revealing a dark corner of South Korean history.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
