ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS by Jami Attenberg

Victor Tuchman is dying, but none of his family members will miss this cruel and secretive man one bit.   In fact, their attitude is more one of good riddance.  Barbra, his abused wife, was an emotionally unavailable parent to both her daughter, Alex, and son, Gary, who are now grown with one daughter each and marital problems of their own.  Alex comes to New Orleans with a sense of duty and a mission to convince her mother to spill the beans about Victor’s life, particularly how he achieved his ill-gotten gains.  Barbra, however, is just as tight-lipped, distant and self-centered as ever and has no intention of sharing anything.  Gary books a flight but intentionally misses it.  In other words, no one will grieve when Victor dies, and the extent to which this is true becomes glaringly apparent at the end.  Another important character is Twyla, Gary’s wife, who has a secret of her own.  The chapter perspectives rotate among Gary, Barbra, Alex and Twyla, with a couple of chapters devoted to characters whose relationship to the Tuchman family is not apparent until the end.  I found this aspect of the book disconcerting, because, by the time their relevance was revealed, I had already forgotten their stories and had to backtrack.  Still, the author writes with clear-eyed objectivity about heinous acts that leave their mark on Victor’s family members, who struggle in their adult relationships, with varying degrees of success.  The fact that Alex’s and Gary’s daughters come through the family dysfunction relatively unscathed is a tribute to their parents.  Barbra managed to shield Alex from the brunt of Victor’s blows, but Gary’s childhood experience was quite different.  The fact that Barbra turned a blind eye is particularly maddening and almost as unforgivable as Victor’s viciousness.  In fact, I found Barbra to be the villain of this novel, allowing her mother to raise Barbra’s children and lamenting the fact that Victor struck other women as well.  Her own guilt in implicitly giving him permission to strike women in general is overshadowed by her jealousy that other women made him just as angry as she did.  That’s unsettling.