In Michelle Berry’s darkly funny and poignant first novel, three siblings come together to arrange the funeral of their mother, Becka, who has died after a struggle with liver cancer. Yet Hilary, Thomas and Billy can’t agree on a plan of action. Grief, and having to deal with one another in the difficult surroundings of their childhood home, has brought to the fore all their fears and insecurities. Besides, they are a strange trio.Hilary put her life on hold to care for their agoraphobic mother who had never recovered from the fact that her husband had walked out. With only dolls for company, Hilary grows more and more eccentric, collecting jars of preserves and carefully laying rocks all over the hardwood of the living room floor so it feels like a beach. She seems both naïve and wise about the world. But, for her, life away from the house is unimaginable.Billy isn’t sure when his life took a wrong turn. He doesn’t remember having childhood He hung out with Tess, and then he married her, and now all Tess cares about is food. Meanwhile their seventeen-year-old anorexic daughter is pregnant and won’t tell them who the father is. Billy relies on the bottle to get him through life’s quiet disappointments. Afraid to tell anyone he’s lost two jobs because of his drinking, he pins all his hopes on his share of the proceeds from the sale of his mother’s house.Thomas moved to the other side of the country as soon as he could, and though he sent money regularly, his fear of flying has been a good excuse not to visit for sixteen years. Successful, handsome, of sophisticated tastes, he nevertheless hasn’t found the courage to tell his family that he is gay and in a long-term relationship. Thomas feels guilt over having helped his family so little, but is anxious to put the past back in its box and continue his perfect life.As the three argue over what should be done with the house and with their mother, Becka silently awaits burial at the Mortimer’s Funeral Home. Dick Mortimer was Hilary’s childhood sweetheart. Now overweight and lonely and smelling faintly of formaldehyde, Dick is somewhat flustered to see Hilary again in the funeral home where they used to sneak around among the coffins. As the two begin to see in one another a faint possibility of a new life, Hilary reveals an outrageous plan for where Becka should be buried. Eventually they all reluctantly agree to hold the most unusual backyard party the suburbs have ever seen.While touching on the darkness of emotional loss — heightened by an incident of necrophilia, a near miscarriage, a heart attack and all the macabre details of preparing corpses for burial — the story keeps tragedy at bay with a healthy dose of dark humour. In the end, the novel seems to say, it is the enforced connection of the family, however dysfunctional, that will bring us a little bit closer to what we all want. Full of wit, understanding and compassion, What We All Want explores the nature of family, love and relationships in a narrative that’s impossible to put down — and may make you feel a lot better about your own family.
