All Yours [Paperback]

I was looking forward to reading this book but must confess that I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I would.

From the outset of the book I found that I had no real connection to the main character "Ines" and I found it difficult to undertsand her motives or actions during the course of the story (which i will not summarise here as its pretty much all in the blurb). As a result I found reading the book more of a chore than a pleasureable expeience. I also found the story's subplot with the mother-daughter relationship to be far more interesting than the main plot and I eneded up feeling that this should have been the main focus of the story rather than the actual one presented.

However, that being said, the langauge used and style of writing has been very well translated from the original Spannish and the pace of the novel is very good, the book neither felt too long nor too short.

All in all an interesting read that does nothing to offend nor, sadly, does nothing to inspire.

This is humour of the darkest variety. Ines is a wonderfully delusional Buenos Aires housewife who has no idea what's happening in either her husband's or her daughter's life. (In this family none of them really know what the other two are up to, which is probably more true to life than we'd like to admit.) Piniero describes Ines's behaviour - which seems entirely logical from her own point of view - in a beautifully matter of fact way, with simple, elegant diversons right to the last page.
Pages from the court report, dropped into the book every now and again, give us an idea of what happens after the book ends but we are left with a few loose ends. Perhaps there'll be a sequel, or perhaps part of the pleasure in reading this elegant little tale of murder, psychopathic behaviour and suburban family life, is drawing our own conclusions.
As for the humour, you're not going to laugh out loud, but if you have a twisted sense of the absurd, I'm sure it will reward you with the occasional wry smile.

In a perfectly pitched black comedy, Claudia Piñeiro confirms the promise of Thursday Night Widows, her first novel to be translated into English. All Yours is a short book, but one that packs a real punch despite its deceptively light-hearted tone throughout. Most of the novel is a direct window into the stream of consciousness of Ines, who has been married to Ernesto for more than 20 years. At first we see them as having the perfect marriage that Ines would like to believe is real, but we find ourselves constantly reassessing reality as Ines is forced to suspect Ernesto of being unfaithful to her, and as we come to learn via witnessing her "in passing" thoughts, how they came to meet and marry.

Unlike the blurbs on the cover and at the publisher's (and retailer) websites, I'm not going to provide plot details here, because knowing them in advance would simply deflate this souffle of a novel, which is light, short, funny and as nasty as it gets. (This is one of those books where even a bare plot summary is the same as providing spoilers.) On the one hand, one can't stop smiling at Ines's thought-processes and actions as she makes new discoveries about her marriage and what she assumes her husband is capable of - especially when she goes through all the possible interpretations (filtered through rose-tinted glasses while thinking about the dry-cleaning and other domestic trivia) of each piece of evidence she finds in the house or encounters on her trips out - yet on the other, one is horrified and saddened by the trap that she and Ernesto are in. Just who is deceiving who, and how far will either one of them go? These are questions that the author puts in several different guises, and answers in no uncertain fashion.

The most tragic part of the novel is the interwoven story of Laura, Ines's and Ernesto's teenage daughter. Obsessed with her husband, Ines has no time for the girl while Ernesto, though adoring her, is unable to relate to her in any useful way. The two parents are totally locked into their own concerns, and fail to see what's happening to their daughter, let alone help her. Laura's story is told in tiny little phrases, underlining her irrelevance to her mother and her lack of presence in her family home. We gradually come to realise how the story of Laura exactly mirrors that of Ines and Ernesto when they were her age - but will she act, or turn out, the same?

The author does not waver from the engaging, chatty tone of this book, which makes the reader a confidant of Ines and hence automatically on her side before realising how far we have been drawn down the path of collusion. Ernesto, a shadowy figure seen only through the eyes of the four female characters in the novel, is someone who is very easy to dislike. Ines is a vivid, opinionated and sharply drawn character. She carries the novel, and whether she will manage to juggle all her complex balls in the air or whether they will all come crashing to the ground in an apocalypse, one cannot help but have a degree of sympathy for her, not least because of what we know about her mother and her background.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, with its constant challenges to the reader's loyalties and its regular shifts of perspective while maintaining an airy tone whatever the nightmares being described. I highly recommend that you read it (but put on a blindfold when it comes to reading any blurbs or synopses, as it really would spoil the book's impact to know too much, or even anything, before you start).