Synopses & Reviews
An addictive and moving debut about love, fidelity, sports, and growing up when you least expect it, told through the irresistible voices of three generations.
It's the spring of 1994 in Cooperstown, New York, and Joanie Cole, the beloved matriarch of the Obermeyer family, has unexpectedly died in her sleep. Now, for the first time, three generations are living together under one roof and are quickly encroaching on one another's fragile orbits. Eighty-six-year-old Bob Cole is adrift in his daughter's house without his wife. Anne Obermeyer is increasingly suspicious of her husband, Hugh's, late nights and missed dinners, and Hugh, principal of the town's preschool, is terrified that a scandal at school will erupt and devastate his life. Fifteen-year-old tennis-team hopeful Julia is caught in a love triangle with Sam and Carl, her would-be teammates and two best friends, while her brother, Teddy, the star pitcher of Cooperstown High, will soon catch sight of something that will change his family forever.
At the heart of the Obermeyers' present-day tremors is the scandal of The Sex Cure, a thinly veiled roman à clef from the 1960s, which shook the small village of Cooperstown to the core. When Anne discovers a battered copy underneath her parents' old mattress, the Obermeyers cannot escape the family secrets that come rushing to the surface. With its heartbreaking insight into the messy imperfections of family, love, and growing up, Love All is an irresistible comic story of coming-of-age — at any age.
Review
“A touching character-driven tale…the prose is effortless, and the characters are accessible and genuine, making this a promising debut.” Publishers Weekly
Review
"The problem with most first novels is that they read like first novels. Callie Wright's debut, Love All, reads like the work of a writer in mid-career….[Wright] has a feel for life among the small-town gentry reminiscent of Updike." Vanity Fair
Review
“[A] winsome debut novel….Wright is a sure-handed writer who's at her strongest when describing the vicissitudes of marriage, which she does with great heart and originality….Love All is a study in intimacy — how we create it, how we bungle it; and, most of all, how we yearn for and require it, no matter how small or large our daily geography.” Oprah.com
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"[A] fetching debut novel." Elle magazine
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"A generation after a salacious roman à clef airs an entire town's dirty laundry, the tell-all book resurfaces in the same house it originally wreaked havoc on, forcing one family to ask if history will repeat itself….[Love All's] storyline will launch any kind of gossip session or book club discussion." Marie Claire
Review
"I read Callie Wright's splendid debut novel, Love All, with such a delirious swim of recognition that I was both rueful and nostalgic when I finally put the book down. Like Julia, one of the beautifully complicated main characters, I was a young girl in Cooperstown in the early 1990s: I can tell you that this generous, wise writer nailed this story with astonishing and heartfelt aplomb." Lauren Groff, author of Arcadia and The Monsters of Templeton
Review
"With the power and grace of a strong forehand swing, Love All introduces one of fictions most endearing families — a family as real as your own. How does Callie Wright manage to make falling in love heartbreaking, and losing the love of your life heartwarming? How does a single week manage to feel as full as a lifetime? That's the magic of this unforgettable debut. If this isn't a Great American Novel, I don't know what is." Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints
About the Author
Callie Wright is a reporter and researcher at Vanity Fair. She graduated from Yale and earned her MFA at the University of Virginia, where she was a Poe/Faulkner Fellow in Creative Writing and won a Raven Society Fellowship. She is the recipient of a Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers and her short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train and The Southern Review. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.