What We All Long For

Move over, Amy Tan. With What We All Long For, Dionne Brand adds her fresh, authoritative voice to a mix of Asian-in-North America fiction. First published in 2005 in Canada, What We All Long For is being released in a U.S. paperback edition to be available in late 2008. Perhaps its Canada-only release is to blame for this book's absence from Booker longlists and the American literary buzz--it's shocking that this book hasn't been more widely available and appreciated before now.

Brand's novel introduces readers to a parade of strikingly real characters, of at least two distinct generations. Tuyen, who readers meet during a drab morning commute in the first chapter, is not only the protagonist but the moral center. She is the filter show more through which readers perceive all of the novel's myths, histories, occurrences, and character changes. The youngest child of a Vietnamese immigrant couple, Tuyen has a compelling past and a magnetic figure. However, satellite characters such as Carla, Jamal, Oku, Jackie, and Tuyen's brother Binh add complex layers to the plot of the novel, and are no less compelling than Tuyen herself.

It is through the name of Jackie's clothing store, Ab und Zu, that the novel's theme is revealed. Over a meal of Jamaican food, the younger generation of characters discusses the name of Jackie's new store: "'Ab und Zu! What the fuck is that anyway?'"

What the fuck it is is the central tension of the novel. Ab und zu, "'Now and then'" Jackie thinks, indicates the way all of the characters, the young ones and their parents, shuttle between their pasts and their presents. Tuyen's insomniac parents long for the son they lost while emigrating from Vietnam, but they miss more the selves they lost. Tuyen's mother misses turning a breech birth, while Tuyen's father obsessively draws the buildings of the strange city of Vancouver (in which he can only peddle Vietnamese food, not continue his career as an engineer). Tuyen, Carla, Jackie, and Oku confront and remember their parents and their parents' varied immigrant lives. Hating their parents for simultaneously capitulating to Canadian culture and for refusing to blend in, each child makes a voyage home during the course of the story, and each child makes a voyage of memory into their past.

In short, this is a surprising novel that interweaves the experiences of Canadian immigrants and their children, while revealing what we all long for: longing itself, for our pasts and for our futures. show less

It took a little while to get into this book, but once I did I enjoyed it. The story follows a group of friends trying to understand themselves, their families and each other while finding money to survive. It jumps from one perspective to another in a way which makes the story feel somewhat disjointed although not in an all-together negative way. Somewhat difficult to get through but a worthwhile read.

I've struggled greatly with what exactly I think of this book, and even more, what rating to give it. Brand's work tells the story of four twenty-somethings living in Toronto negotiating the sometimes tragic details of their lives. There are elements of this book that are very, very good. The way Brand sets the scene in Toronto and its suburbs, in the present and thirty years earlier is excellent. Brand also creates some incredible characters who exist with a reality and depth that is admirable. Brand is a good writer- while perhaps that should go without saying for published fiction, that's certainly not always the case. But with the good comes the bad, too. Parts of this book did not impress me nearly as much. While Brand does create show more some very impressive characters, there were others who were under-developed, and seemed to have little purpose in the overall work. Oky and Jackie, in particular, and even Carla, to an extent, were marginal. Tuyen was far more complex and interesting than any of the others. This book is not a plot-driven one. It is very much character-driven. Brand is clearly trying to get at some larger issues. The book is about identity, about how people construct their identity and how it is constructed for them. On one level this book is about multi-culturalism in Canada, and what it means to be a Canadian of color. But even more (and connected to that) this book is about how family shapes identity. Each of the main characters is significantly shaped by tragedy in family life. Tuyen is shaped by the loss of her brother, Carla by her mother's suicide and brother's problems, Oku by his difficult relationship with his father, and Jackie by the decline of her parents' Toronto neighborhood. This is a saga about parents, children, and siblings, and how these people play as much of a role in the formation of the self as anything else. Interestingly, all of the main characters are rebelling in some way against their families, abut their rebellions serve only to underscore how deeply they are shaped by their family experiences. Ultimately my opinion was divided on this book, hence the 3. I admired some things, but disliked others, and would have liked more attention to plot and the ending. show less

Brand, Dionne. What We All Long For: a Novel. Toronto: First St. Martin (Griffin edition), 2008.

From the very beginning I thought this book looked interesting. Originally published in 2005 I had heard that it had even been used in university Lit classes. Upon knowing that tidbit I assumed a level of complication with the characters and a deeper depth of plot. Here is what I came away with: complicated characters that all want something (parallel to the title). Their relationships to one another go around and around - always circling one another - but really, going nowhere. This is where the plot came up short. That sense of longing hums along the fine lines of each relationship, and there is a common theme of boundaries but beyond those show more connections each character is lost. Tuyen is a lesbian in love with her straight best friend. Longing for someone she can't have, sexual preference is Tuyen's barrier. Carla is the biracial bike messenger Tuyen is in love with. Carla has a troubled brother. Longing to steer her brother straight, lack of money is Carla's barrier to helping him. Oku is a music-loving college drop-out of Jamaican decent. His unrequited love for Jackie is his longing while her boyfriend is the barrier. Jackie longs for simplicity. Her barrier is being attracted to more than one man.

Oddly enough, the linear, uncomplicated character of the story (told in first person) is the one with the most depth and more intriguing story. Quy is the brother of Tuyen. He was separated from his parents in Vietnam as a very young child and has been lost to them ever since. His story is how her survived refugee camps in Thailand and how eventually, he made his way back to Tuyen and her family. Tuyen has never met this long-lost brother so when he reunites with his parents life changes for Tuyen.

The last character in What We All Long For is probably Brand's most complex and mysterious: the city of Toronto itself. As the characters move in and out of its restaurants, nightclubs, streetcars, and alleys the city responds. It lives and breathes and entices just like its human counterparts. show less

While I got through this book very quickly, it wasn't as satisfying as I had hoped. Better books have been written on the subject of 'what we all long for', the connections between people, their relationship to their environment, etc.
I felt that the author's metaphors didn't quite come together as they might have, and I was not too impressed with the plot twist at the end.

A fun book to go through once, but you probably won't want to keep it around for second reads.

I've spent quite a while trying to figure out how to start a review for What We All Long For, and each time I do I delete it and start anew. I feel like it's due to the fact that the novel is a tricky one to pin down: a work that is invested in multi-ethnicity but doesn't quite nail it; a work that features a mystery but isn't that mysterious; a work that wants to make a case for desire but also for a politics of morality. In the end, it tries but I'm not sure it succeeds on these counts.

The core issue with What We All Long For seems to stem from a plot that features numerous narrative perspectives and several main characters, but seems to meander rather than point in a certain direction. The main focus of our attention is on Tuyen, a show more second-generation Vietnamese-American lesbian who is struggling through both making a living as an artist and winning the affections of her neighbor and best friend Carla, who adamantly denies any homosexual tendencies. While Brand could have made a number of interesting interactions between the women, she instead stresses the silences and absences of discussion, perhaps to let the reader think there's a void to be filled, but coming off mostly as being indecisive about how to address the awkwardness.

Carla's silence, we learn, reflects her inability to deal with her brother, Jamal, who is constantly finding himself in trouble from which Carla must bail him out. While Jamal takes a secondary role in the novel, Carla's reactions to him and to how her family treats Jamal are some of the most poignant passages in the novel, a true domestic strife that comes off as authentic despite moments that threaten to descend into schmaltz. Sure, Jamal is played off to be a caricature, but at least he elicits genuineness from Carla, who reveals a deceptively hidden roundness at those moments.

This subplot, however, is underused, as are many other plots that tangle themselves throughout the novel. Tuyen's friend Oku, a black man who desires the love of Jackie, a clothing store owner already in a committed relationship, is the responsible foil to the somewhat immature Tuyen, but doesn't come off as being terribly influential to her, existing within his own story in too isolated a manner.

The same happens, most unfortunately, with the novel's most self-conscious attempt at a mysterious sub-plot: the disappearance and eventual return of Tuyen's long-lost brother Quy, who disappeared at the dock as her family left Vietnam for Toronto. Quy's first-person journey is intriguing but, again, underused -- he vanishes for long stretches of pages at a time and his tale, while fascinating, is simply not substantial enough to warrant the deviations. And while his potential return and the impact of that return on the dynamic of Tuyen's family (particularly on her long-suffering brother Binh) has incredible potential, it is hinted at but never truly mined to its fullest.

All of which leads to a finale that throws a huge wrench into the proceedings and threatens the very foundational relationships of the novel, but cops out from exploring them deeply. It's as if Brand wants us to decipher for ourselves what will happen to the people we've seen now that we have this event to consider, but it feels instead as if she simply didn't know what to make of it herself and simply cut the book off at that point. Like so many other elements of the novel, Brand has ambitious plans but falls short of executing them, leaving us wanting instead of deliberating, ironically longing for more but having nothing left to work with.

As an infusion, the novel struggles to piece everything together. From the awkward implementation of slang to the lack of development of the subplots, the novel comes off as an ambitious idea that the author couldn't quite pull off, a success in conception but a failure in execution. There's enough here to suggest that Brand has talent and ability, but What We All Long For is not necessarily the highest realization of either. show less

This book was actually published in 2005 though I received it as an Early Reviewer book in June 2008 (paperback edition). This is a book about young adults living in Toronto, dealing with issues of sexuality. The setting and characters are compelling. While it took me awhile to get started, this is a very enjoyable book.