RL, un hombre de cincuenta años que regenta un negocio de pesca deportiva en un pequeño pueblo de EE. UU., se encuentra con June, la viuda de un amigo íntimo, para celebrar el que hubiera sido el cincuenta cumpleaños de su amigo. Tras once años atrapada por el recuerdo de su muerte, June ha decidido pasar página y pone a la venta la casa que habían compartido. Las cosas también están cambiando para RL: Betsy, una antigua novia, le pide que la acoja en su casa mientras recibe un tratamiento de quimioterapia, y su hija de diecinueve años, Layla, tampoco pasa por su mejor momento. Su relación con esas tres mujeres afecta profundamente a RL; los cambios a los que ellas se enfrentan harán que se cuestione lo que ha hecho durante los últimos años y le empujarán a tomar de nuevo las riendas de su vida. Ambientada en un pueblo del estado de Montana, cuya belleza y carácter se ven reflejados en los personajes, Todo es una novela sobre las segundas oportunidades. Publicada en 2010, la crítica norteamericana la consideró como una de las mejores novelas del año.

Spoilers.

A well-written book about people in Montana, mostly. A man, his daughter, the widow of his best friend. The woman decides to move on to a different life but finds it wasn't the right decision.

A little stream of consciousness in style, this novel focuses on a small number of friends and family living in the mountains of Montana. They've all suffered some type of loss and the novel examines who they cope with that loss and each other as they go on with their lives. There is some beautiful imagery in this book....and lots of trout fishing. ( )

Kevin Canty’s Everything: A Novel is full of lyric grace and thoughtful questions about who we are, both individually and in community with people we know (or think we know) and love. Maybe I’ve just reached “a certain age,” like several of Canty’s characters; but those characters’ interactions and reflections have a ring of truth, with meaning, significance and understanding (such as it is) developing steadily over the short period of the novel’s action, and with no easy answers or quick resolution. The landscape of its setting (primarily Montana) is appealing too. The title (Everything: A Novel) initially seemed difficult to pin down or reconcile with the story, yet it reveals a truth about the scope of the story at hand. Everything: A Novel was quite satisfying as a work of fiction, and I’m doubly interested to look now at some of Canty’s earlier work. ( )

Everything by Kevin Canty

I didn't as much read this story as drift through it. I was caught up in the lives of RL, June, Layla, and to a lesser extent Betsy and Edgar, much the way we get caught up in the lives of people around us, particularly in a small town. It was an easy book to put down when I had other things to do, but also very easy to get back into it when I picked it up again.

This is what I call a quiet novel. There isn't a lot of exciting action. It's not that nothing happens, but none of it is remarkable. It's pretty normal, routine, even. Instead we are put into the heads of the main characters through their somewhat mundane lives. It was as if I were observing them. Their crises are also the normal every day kind that most people face. This is, in part, what made it so appealing to me. I found myself thinking about what was happening in their lives and thinking about my own life. I also found myself telling them to wake up or pay attention when I thought they weren't acting as they should or were missing something that I thought was obvious. While none of these characters was someone I totally identified with, they all nonetheless became people I cared about. They were real to me.

Even though there isn't much action, there is a definite turning point, an apex to the plotline. It's more than simply a set period of time in their lives. It has the requisite change that makes it a novel rather than an overlong vingette.

At first Canty's lack of quotation marks for his dialog bothered me, even tripped me up occasionally. But as I got into the story I didn't really notice it any more. Over all, his writing style is smooth, literate without being snooty or highbrow. I enjoyed this novel. ( )