Nancy Pearl (one of my heroes) whetted my appetite for this novel simply by describing it as the story of a writer who turns her best friend’s life into fiction. But All is Vanity has many timely themes, including a classic morality tale of unwise financial choices.Margaret Snyder quits her job as a high school English teacher in New York City, deciding she’ll take a year out to write a novel. She starts writing about Robert Martin, a Vietnam vet who’s trying to start his life back up again in the States, but only manages a few workaday scenes of him having breakfast. Progress is painfully slow, causing Margaret to wonder whether she’s really cut out for this novelist lark after all. When she and her husband Ted realize they need more money coming in, she can’t even get her old job back or hold down a demeaning internship for a magazine editor. She’s been let down by the reality of life and the inevitability of failure; she wonders bitterly, “Had I been, after all, only an overachiever type, who, in fact, had not managed even to overachieve?”Meanwhile, for Letty MacMillan, Margaret’s best friend since childhood, it seems like the tables are turning. After years of economizing to create a decent household for her husband Michael and their four children, Michael gets a great job offer at Los Angeles’s Otis museum and it feels like they can finally treat themselves to things they’ve wanted for ages. They start off small: a dishwasher, a remodeled kitchen, then a new house, an SUV, and so on. Letty believes that “with these accoutrements, we had clearly succeeded in life. Without them, we had failed.” They also throw lavish dinner parties in their desperation to impress Michael’s posh new colleagues. Before they know it, costs have spiraled out of hand and they are nearly $150,000 in debt. Letty embezzles money from her boss’s events planning company to try to pay off some of the worst debts, all along believing that Margaret’s promised book advance will rescue her.For Margaret has abandoned her Vietnam vet narrative and instead turned Letty’s story into a barely disguised novel about “Lexie” and “Miles” – starting as a light-hearted redecorating saga and swiftly descending into a Madame Bovary-esque tragedy of debt and despair. And Margaret takes a secret thrill in her power to drive the real-life plot along by encouraging Letty’s consumerism and dictating what an impressive party would require. For Margaret the shopping fantasy is a way of exorcising her own money problems; Ted is so stingy he makes her record all expenditures in a ledger, all the way down to shoelaces, whereas Letty shoves piles of second- and third-notice bills under a mattress.The two friends’ differing attitudes towards money both reflect a bitterly defended sense of entitlement. Ironically, Letty seems to be the true writer out of the pair: her e-mails are always delightfully written and she is allowed a few first-person segments interspersed with Margaret’s narration. When it comes to talent – and especially money – what is deserved and what is fated don’t always seem to work out fairly.(This review formed part of an article about books on the financial crisis for Bookkaholic.)
The characters really bugged me. Margaret didn't seem to care about anything other than being the best at something. It seemed like the only reason she wanted to write a novel was for the acclaim it would give her, and not because she had a message.You know how they say that the people that annoy you the most are the ones whose faults are most like your own? Throughout the course of this book, I started to see that Margaret grated on me because she was so real (and probably because I identify with her faults). As irritated as I was, I had to know more about her. It's like the way you feel when you think your name has been said out loud, and you tune in. Letty, on the other hand, begins the story as a charmingly clumsy housewife with the gift of just the right words to make any moment memorable and funny. But when her husband gets an important job, she becomes more and more consumed with appearing good enough in society - having the right tiles on the kitchen floor, the right kind of organic yogurt in the fridge, etc. These characters were so real that if a camera had caught them on film, you would see the rough edges and the acne, rather than their air-brushed loveliness. All had their weaknesses, with the power to undo them: Margaret's prideful desire to stand out, to be the best; Letty's envious desire to have everything (herself, her home, her children) look beautiful to those around her; Ted's parsimonious need to record every single purchase in the house ledger. I was reminded of Golem's pursuit of his "precious:" we all have the ability to be Golem or Smeagol, according to the sway that we give to that darker side of our characters, the thing we are always in question of whether we can or cannot live without. Schwarz imparted this truth honestly and without cutting corners, so, while it was sometimes painful to read, this was a very valuable book.
What do You think about All Is Vanity (2003)?
This book was written in 2003 and in some ways, it is a bit dated, but it is very well done. Some reviewers on Amazon say that the characters aren't realistic, but I think the past decade has shown the Letty could very well be a real person whose desire to keep up with the people around her drives her family into bankruptcy. The story is about two best friends. Margaret, who quits her job as a teacher to write a novel and Letty who lives with her husband and 4 kids in LA. Margaret then suffers a terrible case of writers block while Letty's husband gets a new job in a large art gallery and is suddenly spending lots of money just to keep up with his new job. Margaret then begins to use Letty to help her over come her block. My biggest problem with the novel is that it takes way to long to get going. Margaret suffers from writer's block for a very long time! You know what is coming if you just read the book cover and it would have been a better book if the author had gotten there sooner.
—Allison
Well written and engaging modern tale of consumerism gone wild. On the surface this is the story of a prospective writer who encourages her muse to make dangerous choices in order to further her writing career. But on a deeper level it is also a story about wanting, and not just the wanting of material things. There is the longing to be "someone", to matter, to make a difference, the longing of parents to give their children a better life with more opportunities. It is also a story about love and friendship, and how fragile our lives really are. Some of the secondary characters seemed a little scripted, but having tried my hand at the craft of writing, I thoroughly enjoyed Margaret's struggles in putting pen to paper.
—Erika
400 pages. Exploration of female friendship, envy, and misguided ambition. Satirizes the desire to shime in the world.Lifelong best friends Margaret and Letty are in their mid-30s. Margaret has just quit her teaching job to write a novel in Manhattan; Letty, her husband, and her four children are enjoying their first taste of worldly success in Los Angeles. Margaret soon discovers that writing is not as easy as it looks, and Letty finds herself financially over her head in the one-upmanship of L.A. living. Reading Letty's hilarious e-mails, Margaret realizes that a great story is unfolding right in front of her, and she begins a new novel based on her friend's travails. Hungry for more drama in her novel, she pushes Letty deeper and deeper into debt. Christina Schwartz's diabolical All Is Vanity sends up so many different things, you need a list to keep track of them all. Taking a drubbing are: the pretensions of would-be writers ("How many people believe they have a novel fully formed in the backs of their brains ... and are convinced if only they could manage to tear themselves away from much more important work, they would just 'write it up'?"); the consumerist frenzy of L.A. (Letty's realtor tells her that her yard "could be 'emotional' with the right landscaping'"); and, of course, the uses and abuses of female friendship. Schwartz, author of the bestseller Drowning Ruth, draws us in with farce, then changes course and gives us a bittersweet indictment of personal ambition. In the process, she shows herself as a writer both compassionate and hilariously cruel--no mean trick. --Claire Dedere.
—Ruth
