Bad Dad Energy But No Baked Ziti

a review of Jami Attenburg’s All This Can Be Yours

This orange book decided to take place in New Orleans because the flights were cheap and ugh it just needed a weekend away from it all! It’s not a novel of place, or even about place. It’s not a book that feels very deeply at all, really. If it were a t-shirt, it would say “My Dad Went to New Orleans and All He Got Me Was This LOUSY T-SHIRT!” That t-shirt design... so self-deprecating… should listen to more Lizzo. 

What to do when a loved one is dying, and we’re forced to grapple with the fact that we never loved the loved one in the first place? This book does not answer that question. The Luchman family and their network are too busy pantomiming their flaws to think critically about death. It’s not a book about place or about death, which leads me to my spyglass-and-trenchcoat conclusion that this is a book about bad people! Doing bad things for no reason! It’s just because they’re bad!

I like stories about bad people desperately grasping around in the darkness for the right thing to do, but I don’t like stories that rejoice in quotidien moral failure. The Luchmans aren’t evil, they just suck. There are half-assed Sopranos undertones, with all of the Bad Dad Energy but none of the baked ziti. The matriarch, Barbra, loves furniture and her fitbit. It’s terrible marketing for Fitbit, because you don’t want to be anything like Barbra. I read this book on the floor, on a Barbra-induced furniture boycott. 

The best character is Twyla, who loves drugstore makeup and spends most of the novel in a bikini and a coverup which I imagined to be a Juicy Couture velour romper. She goes on a highly relatable depression-fueled CVS run then changes her mind at the checkout, so that the employee must put it all back. Nothing says “raise the minimum wage!!!!” like that anecdote.

The butt of a romper speaks a thousand words.

At the smoothie bar we call a family unit, there are unlimited combinations that all result in lasting emotional damage. I wanted to yell “YOU go to therapy! And YOU go to therapy!” Oprah-style to every character. I did like reading this book, though. My eyes have been scorched by screen time, hours hunched over my computer or phone like someone who is hacking into the mainframe (shouts OUT to my girls who can and cannot code). This book made me feel like I was watching a movie via words and paper, which was nice. And as my family continues to tussle over social distancing rules (I am always right and they are always wrong, weirdly), it was good to feel like dysfunction aside--my immediate and extended family absolutely DUNKS on the Luchmans.