The plot of Everybody Has Everything is simple enough: Each around 40, James (a recently laid off TV host of documentaries at a public broadcaster) and Ana (pronounced like “on a moon”; a high-powered patent attorney) have accepted that they can't have children of their own, and just as they decide to start the process of adopting a baby from China, a couple who have become their recent but very good friends are in a car accident. The husband is dead on the scene, the wife is in a coma, and James and Ana realise that their recent agreement to become the couple's executors also means that they will get guardianship of a two-year-old boy, Finn – at least until his mother's condition improves...or deteriorates. All of this happens right away, the following occurring in the hospital on page 4:
"Give him to me,” he whispered hoarsely, angry at the time between the now and the boy he needed to put to his chest, angry that no one had given him over sooner. He grabbed the bundle, and My God, it was still warm, which meant it was alive – didn't it? And then something happened that was not of this earth, that was transporting, undenied. The bundle shook to life, let loose a howl never heard before, a howl from the place in a boy of all knowing, of the miles beneath the beneath, a sound of despair that rolled like a boulder over James. He held the boy closer, the boy who would soon be too big for this kind of holding, his legs dangling from James' torso, a sneaker on one foot, a dirty sock on the other, as if he had been running. The sticky black tar was not tar, James recognized finally, but blood. Blood in Finn's blonde hair that James was weeping into, keening along with him but holding on, holding him, the unbreakable, undroppable boy.I include that longish passage to give the flavour of Katrina Onstad's writing, which I quite liked. The conflict of this plot is between the ways in which James and Ana react to instant parenthood, with James being a natural and Ana, not so much. Even with their back stories filled in, however, I don't know that I really bought these two as more than stock characters. James is a former wild child, now mostly concerned about hiding his bald spot while chatting up pretty girls; a man who can't hang up his coat when he gets home. Ana is committed to her career – so, of course she's a partner-tracked lawyer – whose chaotic childhood makes her unlikely to abandon her marriage, even if she resents picking James' coat off the floor when she gets home late every night. Add a sticky-fingered toddler into the pristine upscale home of this Odd Couple, and it's no surprise who has to play the heavy. On top of this, I don't like coincidences like James and Ana hearing from a doctor one morning that they will never conceive a child and then having them attend the wedding of their new friends (where the bride is hugely pregnant) that same afternoon.
Onstad writes so very many lovely scenes in this book and they do and don't serve the bigger story. I found it very moving when James first lost his job and spent some time taking Finn to the park (pre-accident), and even though James adored playing at parenting, his feelings were hurt when Finn was excited to see his Dad home in the middle of an afternoon and ran off to hug him. On the other hand, I didn't like the scene where Finn goes missing and the neighbourhood forms a search party – as everyone introduced themselves for the first time, it felt like a heavy-handed commentary on urban disconnection, especially coming straight on the heels of a confrontation between James and one of these same neighbours. More heavy-handed scenes were inserted to comment on the questionable morality of Chinese adoptions, the farmer-bullying tactics of a Monsanto-type corporation, and the dumbing down of television (as it relates to the zombifying of children and the deterioration of public television). On the other hand, I liked this very much:
“I don't want to be a mother,” she said blandly. James breathed. He saw her suddenly as something barely held together, like a stack of sticks that happened to be piled up on the chair. She was a liar. There was a lie in their house. Anger welled up in him.In the end, this was a bit of an uneven read, but I was satisfied overall.
