Customer Reviews

Everything You Know

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read "What Was She Thinking?" and liked that one, so read this one. Completely different in style and the character is a rather unpleasant but fascinatingly wicked lug that I could not help but like while I found him pretty vulgar, and a bit funny at the same time.

I love this writing style. I like lots of dialog and little of the going on and on about the pattern in the wallpaper. Just a great read for me. I loved the way the daughter's letters and the action kept grapevining each other. I can't imagine anyone not liking this read - just a great read.

'Everything You Know' reminds me a lot of works by William Boyd, one of my favorite authors, but with half the number of pages. :-) In it we have an older British ex-pat recounting his rather awful life. Wife dies in mysterious circumstances, estrangement with his kids/grandkids, and current career and social outlook is absolutely abysmal. The man is a mess, and he's not terribly likable. But what saves this book from being a frivolous soap opera are its terrific characterizations, and more than terrific prose ... the actual activity of reading 'Everything You Know' is a joy. I also greatly enjoyed her astute observations of American and British cultures; obviously the author is familiar with the ups and downs of both.

Bottom line: wonderful literary brain food. Not an unforgettable read, but strongly recommended reading nonetheless. (PS: her 'Notes on a Scandal' is even better.)

Willy Muller is one of those people you meet and think "Well, now isn't he a character?" You observe him and put him away in your mind, but he pops up from time to time, and you wonder and think about him more than you realize. In Zoë Heller's novel, "Everything You Know" we learn a lot about Willy. He could be a distasteful guy, but then, he is a lot like us in many ways.

Willy is in Mexico recuperating from a heart attack and trying to write a script of a celebrity's memoirs- somewhere there is writer's block and his agent has got him this place to stay and write it out. His girlfriend, Penny, one of those LA women, plastic surgerized and not too bright is with him. He receives a call from his sister in England that his "mutti" (mother) has died and off they go to his homeland. Willy left England with a shabby reputation. His wife, OOna died from striking her head on a fridge door during a domestic bout, and Willy was indicted for her murder. He was sent to prison but got out when he won his appeal. He has two daughters, both of whom believed he killed their mom. His youngest daughter took an overdose of pills and killed herself. Months after her death someone sent him her diaries. They are a compilation of her life- lonely with no mom or dad and no real place to live, looking for love and never really finding it. Reading these diaries gives Willy a chance to look at his own life and try to make some sense of it. While in England he visits his second daughter, but finds she is out for what she can get from him- money. His relatives have given up on him. It is really only Penny who believes in him, and she has no good reason, He has strung her along for a couple of years. He isn't even sure he likes her.

You would think that Willy is a person we wouldn't really like. But we do, he grows on us. He has become someone we care about. We learn more about him than he really wants us to know. He could be any man- warts and all. Willy has a chance to turn his life around. His heart attack has not changed his way of living, except he never wants to go back to that "dirty, filthy hospital, where no one would give him a bath." What is to become of Willy? Will Penny stay with him, will he realize how important she is to him?

Zoe Heller is one of those new authors that will be around for a while.

Highly recommended. prisrob

I thought "Notes on a Scandal" was one of the most entertaining novels I had read in a long time, and while "Everything You Know" didn't quite measure up to Notes, I found it rewarding. Willy is such a cad that reading his thoughts almost feels like a guilty pleasure. I have lent this book to others who didn't care for it, but if you have an offbeat sense of humor and an appreciation for British writers, give Zoe Heller a try.

Everything You Know is a fascinating and hilarious novel with deeply sad undertones. Willy Muller is an unlikeable character but against the odds you find yourself enjoying his company, largely due to his twisted sense of humour. I liked the way that there were no taboos which Willy would not cross, all the things which are often avoided in 'polite' conversation were discussed many times - sexuality, religion, class divides, and so on.

I enjoyed reading about all the characters. I particularly found the extracts from Sadie's diaries to be very touching because it was clear that she was a damaged woman with little self-confidence. The description used was very original and you could really picture all the different characters clearly. Of course, because all the action was described through Willy's eyes it was impossible to know what other people's opinions were about different events, which was intriguing.

Overall Everything You Know is a little gem of a book. It is rare that a novel can have you laughing out loud while still being aware of the sad undercurrents of the story. The concluding idea that it's never too late to be good was inspiring and interesting to think about. Highly Recommended.

JoAnne

Too often one picks up well-reviewed current fiction, only to find over-hyped trifles, or worse. This first novel by Ms. Heller is a happy exception to the rule, and is an astonishingly assured debut. Ms. Heller is able to muster a great deal of sympathy for a character with giant flaws, but who slowly emerges as at least as much a victim as villain. The degree to which Willy's character provokes widely disparate responses is, I think, a good indication of the complexity and nuances of Ms. Heller's craft. Those who simply condemn him as an unredeemable reprobate miss the central focus here---that in garbage culture, scum rises to the top. Reification, the treating of people and human relationships as commodities, is the central focus here, not simply a character study of a guy who has made some bad choices. There is a very acute cultural critique going on here, and although the targets, such as Hollywood and the movie scene are easy ones, they are well done. Willy is a product of this and he well knows it. A very good first effort, and I look forward to more from this writer.

Everything You Know
Zoë Heller's Everything You Know presents the dilemma of whether the reward of reading sparkling writing is sufficient to offset having to endure a narrator/protagonist who is nearly a complete schmuck. I ultimately decided it was, but I had my doubts along the way.

By page 7 we have already learned that Willy Muller has been convicted of manslaughter (the victim was his wife) and, about ten years later, suffered a heart attack. Further, his estranged daughter Sadie has recently committed suicide. The novel, through Muller's narration and excerpts from Sadie's diary, fills in the details.

The overall tone is sordid, including not only the character of Willy himself but also pretty much everything around him, as he sees it. When he describes others he usually picks up on their most repulsive features. He is something of a cleanliness freak, noticing every nook of filth. He is often quick-witted and creative in his criticisms, but almost always at the expense of others.

Muller is a former British television current affairs reporter, turned screen writer and ghost writer of celebrity biographies. "Bad writing is my gift," he declares at one point. His greatest writing offense was his memoir version of his family life and his wife's death - that is where he finally lost any allegiance from Sadie and his oldest daughter, Sophie.

Willy is such a jerk that one wonders how he has ever had any friends at all. Yet, implausibly, he has a loyal girlfriend, Penny, whom he constantly denigrates. In Muller's words, Penny "... has worked as a make-up artist for most of her adult life, which perhaps explains the oddly provisional status she accords her physical self. At forty-whatever-she-is, she is a palimpsest of surgical enhancements." He claims to be fond of her, but treats her terribly and continually complains about "the monotony of her dumbness."

This was Heller's debut novel and it is impressive that she was able to adopt convincingly the fictional persona of an irascible middle-aged man. She applies a few predictable devices to back-fill the retrospective story, but it works. The smart sarcasm of much of it is up to the standard of certain more well-known English writers of her generation. The targets include characters and scenes in the three main venues of the action, Los Angeles (where Muller emigrated following the manslaughter), Puerto Vallarta, and England generally. Heller is especially good in her barbed portrayals of the Los Angeles entertainment world, notably through the bickering dialogue between Willy and his agent, Art Mann (Heller plays with a few names here).

There is a denouement. Toward the end, Meir Rosenblatt, Muller's business manager, tells him "Only when you die do you run out of chances to be good. Until then, there is always the possibility of turning yourself around." Readers can judge for themselves whether Muller ever did.

This novel got great reviews and then got forgotten. That is a shame. Everything You Know is funny, sad, moving, and utterly convincing. Ms. Heller did a superb job of getting inside the mind, body and soul of man just past his middle age. It's quite a feat and quite a book.

I like the way Zoe Heller writes. She's great with dialogue and she just pulls you right along into her story--so the reading is real easy--but then, there you are reading along, and you realize this guy Willy--the main character in this story--is getting more & more obnoxious all the time. If every one of your female friends told her worst nightmarish story about what some ex-boyfriend had done to her--and you put all those stories together, you'd be in Willy's world. He is not lovable. He is not funny. He is really despicable. Heller sets him up--then says--even Willy has a choice--its not too late until you die--so can he change?...will he?. won't he?...is he--or any of us--really capable of changing? If you believe Willy can--then you & I probably can too. It is a worthy question. Not one with an easy answer but its worth pondering.

the humour in this book is so wickedly black. heller has done a great job of capturing those thoughts and details that are usually unvoiced because of their social unacceptability. this is a fun and different read that's not total fluff. i personally hope that heller is slaving away on her next novel; i look forward to reading more of her work.