Monday, September 15 - Janelle Brown, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

Janelle Brown is the author of a first novel with the enviable tragic-comic title All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, a dark and funny critique doled out with equal parts mean humor and compassionate characterization, a novel of manners like Jane Austen’s which has been compared favorably to Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. The story of three women’s betrayals and bad decisions, it’s a smart commentary on the willing victims of post-feminist America, Big Pharma and Silicon Valley, corporate greed, country club living, drug culture, Hollywood and high school, but witty and generous and, maybe, offering her unlikely heroines a shot at survival. Janelle Brown has written for Salon, the New York Times and Vogue and Self. About this novel fans of hers write “A withering satire” and “a razor-sharp critique” and I have to say that I read this fast, smart, clever novel in two joyful sittings, such a pleasure it was. Monday, noon, on KPFK 90.7 FM/98.7 FM in Santa Barbara.