Book Review: Everyone Is Still Alive
16/03/2022
Book Review: Everyone is Still Alive by Cathy Rentzenbrink
Hello strangers! I’ve been so caught up with planning for my theatre tour (not so subtle plug, sorry) that I’ve totally neglected book reviews despite having read some utter delights recently. Today though, that changes!
At the end of last year I wrote a little bit about how, in discovering the delights of Bookstagram, I found myself being sucked into wanting to buy all the new releases and feeling pressure to read absolutely everything I saw featured. I started to become weirdly self aware when I should have been immersed in a book, and I found this a horribly uncomfortable sensation that seemed to go against the whole point of this often solitary occupation. This year I’ve taken a step back towards rediscovering reading as a pleasure, as my entertainment. Not entirely of course - in the past few years I’ve become much more conscious of reading more diversely and I intend to ensure I continue doing that even if that means I sometimes read outside of my comfort zone. As a general rule though I’ve allowed myself to stop making lists or lining up my next read, to cut down on new purchases and have even paused my Scribd subscription. Instead, I have just been picking whatever catches my attention from my overflowing bookshelves or my library app.
One of the books I read on this whim was Everyone Is Still Alive by Cathy Rentzenbrink. I bought a hardback copy of the book in a charity shop last year, shocked that someone was giving it away for £1 (but grabbing it quickly before they changed their mind) and devoured it in two days. I’m a huge fan of Retzenbrink. Her memoir The Last Act of Love, which about her brother, was beautifully written, totally heartbreaking and made me think deeply about what it means to live and to stay alive at all costs. Everyone is Still Alive is her first novel and also touches on this idea but in a much gentler way, a way that’s more focused on living well and getting our priorities straight.
Juliet has recently moved into her late mother’s house with her husband Liam and their young son, Charlie. A writer with one hit novel under his belt now struggling with his difficult second book, Liam takes primary care of Charlie while Juliet works a full-time job. As they settle into the area and navigate new neighbours and playdates, Juliet quietly grapples with her grief and communication between the couple falters. The novel gently follows Juliet, Liam and their new neighbours as relationships come under pressure, tensions rise and one moment changes everything.
I keep saying ‘gently’ because this isn’t a loud novel. There’s no intense drama, no crazy revelations (bar, perhaps, one which in itself is dealt with slowly and carefully) and it felt as realistic to life as possibly any other book I’ve read, simply because of its focus on navigating day-to-day life above all else. The play is set in West London, close to the area I moved to just last year, so there was something lovely about discovering the area in real time as I read the book. Plus, I could also appreciate how specific the writing was about its sense of place, right down to the flower man situated outside Turnham Green tube station who I pass almost every day.
In so many novels about mothers and children, we see the woman being forced to find their place with a group of other women. Everyone Is Still Alive flips that and has Liam entering the mostly female world of school pick-ups, coffee shop afternoons and playdates. He revels in the gossip, finally finding the perfect source material for his next novel and happily takes part in every aspect of his role. This worked as a great tool for allowing the reader to hear about the moments Juliet doesn’t see, with Liam eager to share the latest news. While it’s understandable for a struggling author to take inspiration from the world around him, there are various moments when we’re forced to consider both the ethics of Liam’s relationships with these women and his intention to separate his professional self -a writer with working-class origins commenting on the lives of the middle-class- from his actual life, a man ultimately now also living that middle-class life, being supported by his wife and living in his late mother-in-law’s house.
Perhaps my favourite aspect of the novel were the parts that come from Juliet’s point of view. Her relationship with her son Charlie is beautifully drawn and so many of Charlie’s comments had me laughing out loud, waiting to hear what hilarity he’d come out with next. Despite Liam being the primary caregiver, Juliet seems to be doing a huge amount of housework/childcare despite working long hours. I felt rankled by this, furious that Liam seemed to do the bare minimum and simultaneously frustrated that Juliet, struggling with exhaustion and grief, never called him out on it. Despite this, I found myself wondering if I’d feel the same way if the genders were flipped. I think this is what Rentzenbrink is so good at, holding up situations for you to consider but not hammering her opinion, or any other point, home.
The format of the book surprised me. Although most of it is centered around Juliet and Liam’s points of view, every now and again it drops into someone else’s experience for a chapter or two. The first time this happened I expected the book to segue into alternate chapters for different characters, but that didn’t really happen. Instead it seems there are just tiny, one-off, glimpses of someone else’s life from time to time. I feel like I’ve spent so much time recently talking to fellow writers about plot and form, that something so simple and effective struck me as cheating just because it didn’t fit any remit I’ve yet come across! That said, I really liked it!
There was only one element of the book that I struggled with and, though I’ll try to express this without imparting any spoilers, I also wouldn’t say that ‘spoilers’ are a huge issue in appreciating this book. Though we read about how wonderful Juliet and Liam’s relationship was in their early days, and though we see that they (like most other couples in the book) lose each other a bit during the process of raising children, I didn’t really buy into the way that they find their way back to each other in the end. Perhaps this is simply because I’m much earlier on in a marriage than they are, but I struggled to forgive Liam for some of his behaviour and felt disgruntled that Juliet didn’t bring this up as they tried to set things straight. Maybe apologies weren’t important to her, perhaps she saw that she was getting through to him enough that she didn’t need to rehash every problem and it could, of course, just be that I’m the kind of person who likes to discuss every single issue to avoid feeling resentful. Either way, I still feel that one aspect of the story gnawing at me sometimes.
Ultimately, there are a series of small issues that alter each character’s life in some way throughout the book, but the narrative really turns on one specific event that comes quite a way into the story. It’s moving, uncomfortable and forces everyone to grow up, communicate effectively and decide what’s most important to them. At the risk of sounding repetitive, I just loved how light-handed Rentzenbrink was with this. She tied up loose ends, gave us some hope and left readers with a bittersweet scene that make me smile through tears. If it wasn’t clear, this was a five star, absolutely recommend read from me.
BUY THE BOOK (at my affiliate link on Bookshop.org) - (https://uk.bookshop.org/a/362/9781474621120)