What We All Want

by Michelle Berry (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.29

  A brilliant, original, dark and funny novel about three grown-up siblings dealing with the death of their alcoholic mother, Becka. Becka's daughter Hilary has nursed her through liver cancer; Hilary's brothers, Thomas and Billy, have been away for years, unable to cope with their mother. But they come back to bury her. Becka insists that she wants to bury her in the back garden where she can keep an eye on her. As the three siblings quarrel over the details, Dick Mortimer the mortician intervenes. Can love flourish among the embalming fluids and solid oak coffins...? Uniquely comic with a tragic edge, WHAT WE ALL WANT renders an incisive yet tender portrait of the strangeness of families and the universal desire for acceptance.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $5.73

  A brilliant, original, dark and funny novel about three grown-up siblings dealing with the death of their alcoholic mother, Becka. Becka's daughter Hilary has nursed her through liver cancer; Hilary's brothers, Thomas and Billy, have been away for years, unable to cope with their mother. But they come back to bury her. WHAT WE ALL WANT is a beautifully written, sometimes macabre, but always entertaining story of lives half lived, and of the possibility of change. All three siblings have demons which they challenge with quiet inevitability after Becka's death. These are big themes, but Berry's understatement, humour and originality make this a book of potentially enormous appeal. Uniquely comic with a tragic edge, WHAT WE ALL WANT renders an incisive yet tender portrait of the strangeness of families and the universal desire for acceptance.