Book Review: All This Could be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews

This post is a review of All This Could Be Different by debut author Sarah Thankam Mathews.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I saw it on a list of 'best fiction books of 2022' and the cover, title, and blurb piqued my interest enough to pick it up at my local library.

What is All This Could All Be Different book about?

For me, this is a novel about growing up. Specifically, it's a novel about navigating that newly adult space that takes shape after college but before real responsibility. When the world suddenly expects you to be an adult but you still feel a bit like a kid.

So, in a sense, it's a coming-of-age story but more mature than the teenage angst and typical age group that that genre encompasses. The issues that the main character, Sneha, and her friends face are fully grown, and navigating them requires depth- but this is a depth of maturity that this group of characters doesn't always have.

This book feels like watching them practice adulthood and rooting for them to figure it out.

Storyline of This Could All Be Different

This story follows our main character, Sneha, an Indian immigrant in America as she moves for a straight-out-of-college job in Milwaukee during the jobless recession of the early Obama administration.

We learn about the precarious situation of her job offer, which had first been a saving grace but soon becomes a shady deal as unsteady as the one that sent her father to prison and then deported him back to India, her mother going with him, leaving Sena alone in an often hostile world where she tries to survive by blending in, to the point of disappearing altogether.

In this book, we follow her journey of her self-discovery and how she comes to choose to fight for the space, relationships, and life she has not always felt she deserves.

What I Liked About This Book

A Fight Against Herself

In a lot of ways, I found this book to hinge on internal conflicts- most of them belonging to the main character.

We see her navigate her sexuality and how it clashes with her family values. Her depression vs her inability to express it because of the great luck of her position compared to everyone back home. The deep love she has for her family vs the ways her family has hurt her while creating an unsafe space to express that hurt.

Her desire to be seen and understood as her true self vs her need to survive and not be seen as problematic in any way.

Power Dynamics

Another key theme of this book was power and who has it and who does not. Sneha doesn't have power because she's an immigrant. Her friend, Tig, doesn't have power because she doesn't have money and this constantly threatens her livelihood. Both of them have power deficits on account of their brown bodies and queer identities.

Past this, even the people we think have done power don't. Thom: white, male, and American is also powerless against the same recession and system that forces him into a manual labor job that is relentlessly cruel to his body and health. Sneha's boss is a cog in a machine that soon spits him out just the same.

Hope

This is a book that brims with hope, against all odds. Sneha learns to make peace with her past and her present, making possible the chance for a truly beautiful future. Beautiful in the sense of allowing her to exist fully as herself and allow in all that she hopes for. Thom joins Tig in her vision for a communal home where they'll always belong.

Although amused and annoyed at how pretentious the charade of it seems to be, at her old friend's wedding, the group all comes together to celebrate love. And they discover that love is there to be celebrated.

Even with all the trials they each face, they all walk away with hope for the future. Not a flimsy how based on wishful thinking but a solid hope that's based on taking action in the direction of what they want and whose expectations are based in reality. This is perhaps the biggest indicator of their maturity.

This is a book I would recommend to every young person who feels lost in that 'not-quite-an-adult-yet' space.

Sex Exploration

The exploration and discussion of sex, particularly domination-kink-lesbian-sex as seen through the lens of the main character, was a revelation. It was interesting and uncomfortable and exciting. It felt honest and raw, outside of the excitement that reading any sex scene generates, this raw honesty is a merit in itself and is one of my favorite things in any medium.

It doesn't matter what you tell me, just make it honest. I commend her for this because shedding that protection of propriety is scary, but past that threshold is where all great writing resides.

What I Disliked About This Book

Novice

This book reads like a first novel. A very well-written and thought-out first novel, but a first novel nonetheless. There is a patina of novice that I can't help pick up. I don't know how useful this is as a criticism considering that this is Thankam Mathew's first novel, but it's worth noting. I think all of my other criticisms stem from this one central idea, so understanding it helps to qualify and anchor them.

Tighty-Contained/ Low Stakes

This book felt safe. I had a general feeling that everything would work out in the end. Now, a happy or hopeful ending in and of itself is a great thing. I like that as much as the next person, and I don't believe a story has to be gruesome or spirit-breaking to be good. However, I do think that there has to be enough space between the author and her characters to save them from the protection that lack of space creates.

I don't think these characters had that. I sensed from the beginning that they were so close to her that she could never truly hurt them or let them fall even if she wanted to. There are hints of danger, and traces of pain- but all this happens within the safely contained world of her loving hands. She won't let them fall. This killed the stakes and created a reading experience for which my investment had limitations.

Characters

I enjoyed these characters yet they felt a little thin in a way that made them unreal for me. That's not to say that they weren't well thought-out or that they lacked complexity because they didn't, but for the density that complexity and well-thought-out layers create, they lacked a lightness to animate them and fully bring them to life. I enjoyed these characters but they felt like characters. They were not as real as you and me as I would have liked.

Verdict: 3.5 Stars

I think the book All This Could All Be Different is a great literary contribution by Sarah Thankam Mathews, particularly as a first novel. The literary world agrees. Her book was shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Award, Discover Prize, and Aspen Literary Prize. I enjoyed her voice and I'm happy that it seems to be one we'll be hearing from again and again.

My Take:

I enjoyed the story she told and how she told it. At its most brilliant, it offered refreshing honesty and I felt like I was in on her secrets. The story is complex enough to be interesting and the various subject matters are handled with responsibility and care.

However, I think they might be handled with too much care which I found to diminish the stakes. In general, I also think that the story and the characters could have been more real. For as well as it was written, it never quite stopped feeling like a story. For these reasons, I give the book a 3.5-star rating.

Let me know if you pick it up and what you think of it.

Happy reading and talk soon,

Nonjabulo