All the Secrets of the World
A Novel
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3.8 • 10 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“A breathtaking success . . . dazzling.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“[A] rollicking, wide-ranging, unpredictable novel—part crime story, part coming-of-age, part satire, part deadly serious.” —Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer finalist for The Great Believers
Who pays for the secrets we keep? For the lies we tell ourselves?
Lorena Saenz has just been paired with Jenny Stallworth for a school project by a teacher hoping to unite two girls from starkly different backgrounds. Jenny is pretty and popular, and Lorena is quickly drawn into the family’s picture-perfect suburban lifestyle. Jenny’s mother, Rosemary, is glamorous, but needy—she treats Lorena like a friend, if only to break up the monotony of lonely afternoons. Jenny’s father, Marcus, spends his days teaching and his nights wandering the desert, absorbed in his research on the scorpions of Death Valley. Outwardly, they are the perfect family, poised for success in 1981 Sacramento at the dawn of a glorious American decade. Lorena finds her access intoxicating and alluring, a far cry from her life in the small apartment she shares with her single mother.
But the veneer is shattered when Marcus disappears. The prime suspect: Lorena’s troubled older brother, Tony.
To uncover the truth, Lorena must embark on an unforgiving odyssey into the desert, into the secrets and lies of the Stallworth family, and the dark heart of America’s criminal justice system. A shape-shifting social novel, All the Secrets of the World is a propulsive tour de force from a writer at the height of his powers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fiction writer and essayist Almond (Bad Stories: What Just Happened to Our Country) stuffs his debut novel with a lurid if convoluted story of teen friendship and crime in the Reagan era. In 1981, 13-year-old Lorena Saenz, a Sacramento eighth grader with a passion for learning, is partnered by her teacher with Jenny Stallworth for a science fair project. Lorena, who is being raised by a single mother from Honduras with modest means, becomes friendly with Jenny's wealthy parents, who include her in family meals and take her camping. Then, Jenny's father, Marcus, falsely accuses Lorena of trying to hit on him before inappropriately embracing her, an encounter witnessed by Lorena's older brother, Tony. His hostile response makes him the prime suspect after Marcus vanishes and is believed to have been murdered. Because Jenny's mom knows Nancy Reagan slightly, she improbably manages to get the first lady, still traumatized by the attempted assassination of her husband, to try to prioritize the investigation ("The ghostly currents of political power run through the grid of law enforcement," Almond writes). The truth about Marcus is a yawner, and whatever deeper message Almond tried to imbue is lost in the outlandish plotting. The author's fans will have fun with this Day-Glo rendering of the early '80s, but in the end it falls short.
