Elizabeth Banks

Have you guys been reading along with us on this third book club selection All We Ever Wanted was Everything by Janelle Brown? Well the author so graciously offered to answer some of the questions we had about the book. Let’s dig in:

Janelle, thank you for your very thoughtful, fun and surprisingly funny book (despite the horrible proceedings of divorce, despair, debt and addiction!). I'd love to highlight your book on my blog and was hoping you could answer these few questions for us! Any help is appreciated.

Not a problem - glad you enjoyed the book. Dark and funny is what I was going for.

1. Some say "write what you know" - Is there a personal experience you drew from to write this book? As LA-based readers, we felt your familiarity with this city. What other elements of the book - characters or places - were inspired by real events or places you know?

Well, I grew up in Silicon Valley - though I live in LA now - and definitely drew on that when I was creating the world of (fictional) Santa Rita. It was shocking to me to go back to visit my hometown and see all the lovely old California ranch homes being knocked down by bulldozers and replaced with these immense homes. I set the book during the boom years but it's still happening now - that area has really been transformed by these infusions of the superrich.

As for what else was inspired by real life... In the mid-90's I was the editor of an online feminist magazine called Bitch and then a second one called Maxi. Bits of my experience with that were woven in to Margaret's story - though I did not go bankrupt myself, nor have I dated (and been dumped by) any famous TV actors.

Also, the bit of the story about Lizzie's religious conversion was inspired by my own high school years in a Christian youth group called Flash. (Which ended quickly after my pastor left his wife and newborn to run off to Hawaii with one of my classmates).

And Janice's story about the battle over her husband's IPO money was inspired in part by similar stories I'd heard around Silicon Valley.

There are odds and ends here and there that came from people I knew or things I'd seen or stories I read in the paper. But the biggest parts of the novel are all 100% fictional - for example, I was never pregnant at 14, nor have I been a meth-addicted housewife in the midst of a hideous divorce.

See what author Ron McLarty had to say about his book...

2. We assume you made the family wealthy to add stakes to their falls, but was there another reason? Did you worry it made the women un-relatable?

Yes, the money upped the stakes, but also I was fascinated by the super wealth that emerged during the boom years. It really was / is the American Dream, supersized. It's no longer about being rich; it's about having wealth beyond imagination. And although I wrote it in the days before the Occupy Wall Street / 99% movement, I certainly felt this creeping inequity between the haves and the have-nots in America, and liked the idea of writing about a family that "has" and yet still feels far away from everything that might make them happy. How the bar for "success" has been raised higher and higher until it's something that is almost unfathomably unattainable, even to the people who supposedly have it all.

As far as being un-relatable -- well, they are pretty flawed human beings, and in that sense I think they are relatable to everyone. And it's the rare person who doesn't want to be rich (or at least richer).

3. There is a lot of social anxiety in this book. Is this modern problem something you wanted to explore?

God, yes. Social anxiety fascinates me. The masks we put on to make ourselves more acceptable to those around us; to fit in; to appear as if we're successful and happy and comfortable even when inside we are secretly dying.

4. We loved the multi-generational aspect of the book. You highlight feminism with Margaret (who has a magazine, Snatch) but Janice and Lizzie each epitomize a type of feminist as well, no?

Yes indeed. Janice is kind of a pre-feminist - a woman of the previous generation who sidestepped the bra-burning movement and whose idea of feminism was instead to choose to stay at home and be a homemaker. In the same way Martha Stewart is a feminist. Although she doesn't identify as a feminist - and would bristle at the moniker - Janice is nonetheless a believer in the strength of women and is envious of her daughter's ambition. And Lizzie is what I'd call a post-grrrl feminist - again, rejecting the word "feminist" as fusty and old-fashioned and yet she's absorbed all the girl power ideology that Margaret's generation has been espousing.

5. Random question: what is your favorite book?

This is always a tough one for me. Classic book? I've probably read Lolita and The Great Gatsby a half dozen times each. Contemporary authors? Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad and Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. And I am a secret junkie of apocalyptic novels - I've read Stephen Kings' The Stand 3 times.

Hope that answers your questions. Thanks again for reading!

Did this answer your questions about the book? Do you have any more questions for Janelle Brown?