What we all want Book

Following two well-received short story collections, Michelle Berry offers What We All Want, a first novel about a family dealing with death in a manner that borders on farce. After a long illness, housebound agoraphobic Mom is dead. Now her three children must come together and try to sort things out while battling their own hang-ups and secrets. Billy, a nasty drunk who neglects his wife and can't relate to his pregnant teenage daughter, is hiding the fact that he just lost both his humdrum jobs. Thomas, a successful professional who escaped the family years ago for a city far away, harbours a secret about his sexuality. But it's Hilary who has suffered most: she remained in the family house, taking care of their mother, collecting dolls, lining the living room floor with pebbles, and growing more eccentric by the moment. Hilary has her own secret, along with some highly unconventional funeral arrangements in mind for her mother. Berry's novel is accessible and breezily paced, if relentlessly quirky in its characterizations. As her weird family lurches toward the inevitable big revelation, pathos turns to bathos and her figures spin sadly out of control. The result comes across as farce but without any of the deeper social satire of manners and mores that would help redeem the silliness. --Nigel Hunt