Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

Amy       
Lynnie   

women's fiction

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner is a lengthy family drama that tells the story of two sisters’ lives from both of their perspectives over a span of 50+ years. 

Amy's Review

This novel gives the reader a good idea of life growing up in my parents’ generation and there were many similarities in the Kaufmans’ family history and my father’s family’s immigration history.  So, it interested me from that perspective.  Jo and Bethie were upbeat kids but encountered a number and variety of  difficulties.  In fact, the quantity of issues got to be a bit silly, frankly. It was almost as if you could think of any struggle people might have to face and it was experienced by one of them. And yet, they eventually got through them all or made peace with the situation.  Granted, it wasn’t always fun or easy or quick. But, they had resilience. Unfortunately, the story did not grab me.  I did not really care about the characters and the only gripping question was when Jo could finally love the way she wanted to love.  But, you already knew that would happen because of the first chapter.  Ultimately, it was a depressing story with an ending where the characters are finally enlightened and we can all agree it’s great that women in general have come a long way.  But, without the balance of happy times or even any endearing characters, it wasn’t my kind of novel.

I did not realize there were two narrators, Ari Graynor and Beth Malone, until I was 1/3 of the way through the audiobook.  To me, this novel did not need two narrators. They were both good voice actors.  Whichever one read Bethie did not know the proper pronunciation of Haman from the Purim story which was inexcusable to me.  Narrators should do research if they’re going to be pronouncing the names of specific people from the past. The one who read Jo was fine until she tried a southern accent. Ugh.  I don’t know which narrator read for which character so I’ll just give them a combined B+.

Lynnie's Review

Mrs. Everything follows the journey of two sisters, Jo and Bethie, from their childhood in 1950s Detroit as they grow and travel through life until 2016.

There were things I liked about this novel, particularly just the evolution of people over time as norms, values, and circumstances change.

Overall,  however, this book was exhausting as we watched these women ping pong from one trauma to another. At some point I started to make a list of things our characters endured though I won't add them here for spoiler purposes (hint: if you want to read the spoiler, go over to Goodreads- it's listed there). This family and these women are like the Forrest Gump of chick-lit... they go through EVERYTHING; and most of it isn't particularly enjoyable to watch. It's a lot like being beaten over the head with every feminist cliche ever- and I say this as someone who considers herself a feminist. It's not like I disagreed with the overall arch of the story, it was just so absurd at one point that I literally rolled my eyes after one more tragedy and found myself saying, "well of course this would happen, obviously."

Oddly, as much as we watch Jo and Bethie go through, we never get to share in their joy- we don’t see the Bat Mitzvahs, the weddings (other than the one that is rushed), the births... all Weiner chooses to share with us are the hard times. This is a book that could have used some joy.

I understand the frustration that may have driven Weiner to write this novel- to point out all the gains that women have made in the last 70 years and to also show us how far we still have to go, but when SO much happens to a couple of characters, it's hard to really feel the impact of any of these moments.