Before reading Love All, I'd read The Cazalet Chronicle, Elizabeth Jane Howard's four-volume series about the lives of an upper-middle-class English family between 1937 and 1947, which had long sections from the point of view of the different main characters. Love All is set in the late 1960s, but the technique is similar, with sections from many different characters' points of view. Here, however, I felt that the sections were often too short, and too many characters' points of view were used - some of whom fade from view as the novel continues. It took me quite a while to get my head around who the characters were, and how they were related.

That aside, though, this book has many of the virtues that made The Cazalet Chronicle so enjoyable. EJH is excellent at delineating character, and whereas I wasn't always convinced by her depictions of the male Cazalets, both the male and the female characters in Love All are convincing. The story looks like it may be a fairly conventional romance - various couples finding love by the end of the book - but all is not as it seems, and the book shows the cascading effect of seemingly small decisions and coincidences. It's well worth reading. (4/5) ( )

On the whole I enjoyed this book but found that there were so many characters introduced in individual chapters that it became difficult to follow who was who. However those characters that did stand out enough to be easily remembered provoked interest and empathy and certainly kept me reading on. It's a story that twists and turns and hints at one outcome before hinting at another, while also touching on many family and personal issues. ( )