All is Vanity, Christina Schwarz
All is Vanity, Christina Schwarz
List: $17.95 | Sale: $12.57
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All is Vanity

Author: Christina Schwarz

Narrator: Blair Brown

Unabridged: 10 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/15/2002


Synopsis

In All is Vanity, Margaret and Letty, best friends since childhood and now living on opposite coasts, reach their mid-thirties and begin to chafe at their sense that they are not where they ought to be in life. Margaret, driven and overconfident, decides the best way to rectify this is to quit her job and whip out a literary tour de force. Frustrated almost immediately and humiliated at every turn, Margaret turns to Letty for support. But as Letty, a stay-at-home mother of four, begins to feel pressured to make a good showing in the upper-middle-class Los Angeles society into which her husband’s new job has thrust her, Margaret sees a plot unfolding that’s better than anything she could make up. Desperate to finish her book and against her better nature, she pushes Letty to take greater and greater risks, and secretly steals her friend’s stories as fast as she can live them. Hungry for the world’s regard, Margaret rashly sacrifices one of the things most precious to her, until the novel’s suspenseful conclusion shows her the terrible consequences of her betrayal.

Widely celebrated for her debut novel, Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz once again proves herself to be a writer of remarkable depth and range. Like Drowning Ruth, All is Vanity probes into the mysteries of the human heart and uncovers the passions that drive ordinary people to break the rules in pursuit of their own desires.

About Christina Schwarz

Christina Schwarz is the author of five novels, including The Edge of the Earth and the Oprah Book Club selection Drowning Ruth. Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, she lives in southern California.


Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by Nicole on 2008-08-17 04:39:34

I'm dumber for having read this book. A 12 year could have written it and her teacher would of probably given it a C. I think the author just needed a quick buck and decided to throw one out there.

Goodreads review by Clare

Schwartz’s characters are witty, charming, funny and sometimes cruel. She does an amazing job of making people and places come to life on the page. I feel like I know these two BFFs so well that I have met them and known them for years. Watching their lives unfold on opposite coasts of the United Sta......more

I'm positive that I've read this book before, probably pre-Goodreads. Despite the plot feeling sickeningly familiar, despite being repulsed by these characters (Letty alone was somewhat likeable at the beginning, but quickly devolved into a horrifying caricature of consumerism), despite knowing this......more

Goodreads review by Rachel

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 yo......more

Goodreads review by Meagan

Taking this journey with Margaret and Letty was fun and satisfying, if a little sobering here and there. There was something gloriously meta about watching these two deluded characters march blithely toward disaster while seeming so smugly self-aware. (One wonders how their husbands remained so pass......more