Pitting values against loyalty to family
Author hopes readers will find empathy for novel’s characters
Five days after 9/11, Emily Giffin left her law career in New York to move to London in hopes of becoming a writer. It was not a popular decision with her parents, but Giffin was determined to take the gamble.
Nearly 15 years later, with the release of Giffin’s ninth novel, “All We Ever Wanted,” it’s clear her father needn’t have worried so much. Giffin has a hardcore, devoted fan base, with multiple international bestsellers and a Hollywood movie adaptation of her 2005 debut, “Something Borrowed,” to her name. She’s long outlasted the tired “chick lit” debate, and has reached the upper echelons of women’s commercial fiction, along with fellow authors such as Sophie Kinsella and Lauren Weisberger, both of whom also have books out this summer.
As Giffin now looks back on her writing, she observes a common thread that connects back to her own daring experience of starting a new life and career. On the phone from her home in Atlanta, she says, “I think that all of my books, in some ways, address the question, ‘Are we living the life we’re meant to be living? Are we being true to ourselves?’” And although “All We Ever Wanted” takes Giffin into new territory in terms of plot, she says its character-driven foundation still holds up.
“For this book, it was, ‘What if your most deeply held values are pitted against your loyalty to your family?’”
“All We Ever Wanted” follows a scandal among Nashville’s elite after a party pic of an unconscious teenager, lying on a bed with her skirt pushed up and a breast revealed, spreads through the private academy where she attends as a scholarship student. The story is told from the shifting perspectives of Nina, mother of Finch, the young man accused of snapping the photo; Lyla, the exposed student whose romantic feelings toward Finch complicate justice; and Lyla’s dad, Tom, a single father who struggles to make a living as a carpenter and an Uber driver while dealing with the stress of raising a teenage daughter.
Nina, who grew up in a small town, becomes increasingly more uncomfortable with her lavish lifestyle and how her charismatic husband Kirk uses his wealth as a means of throwing his power around.
When she discovers that Kirk attempted to bribe Lyla’s father Tom in exchange for keeping Princeton-bound Finch out of trouble, Nina is furious, and detaches from her comfortable life even further.
She wants Finch to pay the consequences for his actions, even if it means no more Ivy League. At the same time, Nina is also building a secret relationship with Lyla and Tom, while trying to determine if her son just made a horrible mistake, or is capable of greater deceit like his father.
“All We Ever Wanted” is a prescient read for our time, though Giffin had completed the manuscript before Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment in October 2017, the #MeToo watershed and subsequent discussions around teaching young boys about sex and consent.
“The book came from my heart, but at the same time, all of us have dealt with these issues,” Giffin says. “We all knew about them. It just didn’t have the name and the whole movement behind it. When I wrote the book, I was definitely inspired by those underlying concerns.”
As the mother of 14-year-old twin boys heading off to high school this fall, Giffin related to Nina’s maternal fears of whether she had taken too much for granted with regards to her own sons’ values and education.
“It made me think about the book on a whole other level in terms of the character of Nina and how difficult it is to raise your boys to be sensitive to these issues, and that was something Nina ultimately felt she hadn’t done a great job with,” Giffin asks. “How specific do we need to be with having those conversations with regards to our teenagers and younger children?”
Despite Nina’s rightful anger toward Finch and her desire for him to be punished appropriately, it’s clear she still loves her son and believes in his inherent goodness as a person. Giffin hopes that her readers will also find some empathy.
“I do believe that people can change, and I do believe in shades of grey,” she says. “Some of us are more honest or noble than others, but I think most of us are good people trying to get it right. From that standpoint, I remain hopeful that people can change and be redeemed, and that forgiveness is part of that process.”