Review: All of You Every Single One (Beatrice Hitchman) This is the final recommendation from my TBR subscription from a few months ago; it hadn't been available until quite recently. I think this novel had some real potential for being an engrossing read, but ultimately I didn't get swept away by it at all. First of all, the first 50 pages or so were just too sexually saturated for me, with very detailed graphic descriptions that, to me at least, change erotic to pornographic. It isn't what I read for. I was very interested in the setting, mostly in Vienna (a place I have always wanted to visit), at different periods, although a bit of the story takes place in Sweden, and some in Berlin. In spite of the many different time placements (mostly pre WWI, then the 1930's, then just post war...), it is told entirely in the present tense. Sometimes this gave an immediacy which lifted the tale up, but it felt to me more like pastiche building blocks, and there were passages as well as short chapters that didn't seem to have any purpose. Anyway, here is a tale of an unhappily married Swedish woman who escapes with her female lover and settles in Vienna; Julia and Eve find lodgings in a boarding house run by Frau Berndt where another major character, Rolf, becomes part of a "family" we follow throughout the book. In fact, Frau Berndt has a back story which could really have been expanded wonderfully but is rushed through, and I do think she is the linchpin to all the action. Various threads in their lives enmesh them with an industrialist family, the Bauers; very complicated to lay out all the threads in this web, but ultimately a baby is stolen (you find this out in the prologue, so not a spoiler), but the buildup happens for over half the book before you understand that prologue. It does keep you reading to find out why. And once that pivotal act occurs, the book becomes rather chunky, jumping from place to place and ignoring many years in between. I was disappointed overall with the structure even as I did respect the ability to develop characters who stood firm in their roles.

on the bench near the entrances