Everybody Has Everything

June 15, 2013
Toronto-based journalist Onstad pens a novel that asks if everyone is cut out for parenthood. The book also addresses marital relationships in the modern world, in which both men and women are married to careers that define them. While Ana is rising in her career as a research lawyer in a major firm, her husband, James, a television journalist, has just been laid off and covers his unemployment status by telling people that he is writing a book. Ana and James have put a lot of time and considerable money into fertility treatments and testing without successfully bringing a child into their lives. Things change when they become guardians of 2-year-old Finn. Little Finn's mother, Sarah, is in a coma after being seriously injured in the car accident that killed Finn's father. The father's will specified that his friend James would be his child's guardian in the event of his death. James takes pleasure in being a loving, attentive father to Finn. Ana, on the other hand, is constantly worried about potential disasters and finds the responsibility overwhelming. Ultimately, she realizes she doesn't really want to be a mother but also that such a sentiment is not one a woman can easily express. The ending does not resolve all issues raised but does offer hope for a bright future. A fine novel about contemporary parenting and relationships.

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Starred review from June 15, 2013

Ana and James Ridgemore have spent two years and $30,000 trying to conceive, but in the end it takes them only one hour to become parents. When an accident claims the life of their friend Marcus, leaves his wife Sarah in a coma, and essentially orphans their son, Ana and James are appointed legal guardians of two-year-old Finn. Their orderly, privileged life is suddenly upended to the elation of James, who takes to parenting quickly, and the alarm of Ana, who does not. The family created by circumstance rather than through biology has been fodder for made-for-TV movies for decades, but Canadian journalist (and debut novelist) Onstad's take, both on unplanned parenthood and contemporary urban life, is crisp, gripping, and deeply thought-provoking. VERDICT With concise, elegant prose, the author presents an audacious look at a question no one is supposed to ask, namely, can everyone be parents? Or, more important, should they? Book clubs will find much to captivate them, as will fans of highbrow issue-driven fiction in the vein of Anita Shreve and Wally Lamb.--Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2013
Canadians Ana and James are a childless couple entering middle age when an automobile accident makes them the guardians of a toddler named Finn. The mores of twenty-first-century urban life constitute the framework of the story, and the addition of a two-year-old to a long-standing marriage lends tension and suspense to the narrative arc. The pith of the story resides, however, in the characters, both primary and secondary. Onstad slowly reveals, through flashback and happenstance, the flaws and strengths that Ana and James are forced to face as the marriage that seemed quite solid slowly begins to deteriorate. She demonstrates how interaction with the other people in their lives has shaped them and helped create the current marital crisis. The story's climax and resolution are the opposite of pat, delivering a host of surprises and leaving the future of the characters open to interpretation. This beautiful novel, whose author writes with a mastery of craft and an aversion to the predictable, has broad appeal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)