All of You Every Single One
A Novel
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
From Beatrice Hitchman, an acclaimed and powerful talent in historical fiction, a literary novel set in a bohemian enclave of Vienna about love, freedom, and what constitutes a family.
Set in Vienna from 1910 to 1946, All of You Every Single One is an atmospheric, original, and deeply moving novel about family, freedom, and how true love might survive impossible odds.
Julia Lindqvist, a woman unhappily married to a famous Swedish playwright, leaves her husband to begin a passionate affair with a female tailor named Eve. The pair run away together and settle in the more liberal haven of Vienna, where they fall in love, navigate the challenges of their newfound independence, and find community in the city’s Jewish quarter. But Julia’s yearning for a child throws their fragile happiness into chaos and threatens to destroy her life and the lives of those closest to her. Ada Bauer’s wealthy industrialist family have sent her to Dr. Freud in the hope that he can cure her mutism—and do so without a scandal. But help will soon come for Ada from an unexpected place, changing many lives irrevocably.
Through the lives of her queer characters, and against the changing backdrop of one of the greatest cities of the age, Hitchman asks what it’s like to live through oppression, how personal decisions become political, and how far one will go to protect the ones they love. Moving across Europe and through decades, Hitchman’s sophomore novel is an intensely poignant portrait of life and love on the fringes of history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hitchman (Petite Mort) tells a preoccupying if underwhelming story of queer love in Vienna over the course of both world wars. Julia Lindqvist, 26, is unhappily married in 1910 when, during a vacation in France, she meets a young tailor, Eve Perret, who passes as a man. The women begin a loving, lifelong partnership in Vienna, where they try to find a way to live as a couple. Under the protective wing of Frau Berndt, they create a new family of neighbors and friends, but Julia yearns for a child. The narrative shifts perspectives between Julia, Eve, and other key people in their lives. Ada Bauer is abused by her foster brother, Emil, with whom glamorous hustler Rolf Gruber falls in love. Ada receives treatment from Sigmund Freud, but the other characters don't believe her claims about Emil; later, Ada and Rolf hatch a plot to help Julia realize her dreams. Hitchman makes good use of interwar bohemian Vienna, presenting it as a time capsule of relative permissiveness before the rise of the Nazis, though the happy ending after WWII feels far-fetched, and the cameos of such historical figures as Freud don't add much to the narrative. Though there are some bright moments, little distinguishes this in a crowded field.
