A moving, authentic, hilarious, and life-affirming debut.
Feature image credit: Pantera Press
Nadine J. Cohen, also known as Nadine von Cohen, is a large presence in many Australian women’s lives. Her byline is found across print and electronic media, and her social media postings have amused and roused for several years. Now this witty, intelligent, and uncompromising writer has finally produced a novel.
Everyone and Everything takes us into the world of Yael Silver, a 20-something living in Sydney, grieving over the early loss of her parents, and going through a depressive period that led her to do “the thing.” She is now seeing a psychiatrist, Priya, who as well as being supportive, has a wardrobe to die for, she is developing a better relationship with her sister, Liora, along with her adored nieces and nephew (“the squids”), she has been dragged along by a friend to the women’s only sea-baths, and she is trying to carve out a career for herself as a writer. One day at the baths, Yael gets talking to a much older woman, Shirley, and so begins a fulfilling and surprising friendship.
Cohen has captured the delicate days post-breakdown when loved ones and carers are often hovering, and handling you with kid-gloves. But more than that she has pinned down on the page the thought processes of an individual trying to deconstruct the mess that their life has seemingly become. Relationships are painted in all their glory good and bad, particularly in the case of sisterhood and female friendship. Yael is likeable, annoying, fascinating, and real. Importantly, she is relatable to many women, not just those in their 20s. Shirley, Priya, and Liora too are women most of us can recognise, possibly in ourselves.
As well as being a respectful and intense portrait of psycho-social distress, Everyone and Everything is, as one would hope from Cohen, incredibly funny. The humour is authentic, with most of the laughs attended by that feeling of “oh god yes, I recognise that.”
An utterly enjoyable read from soup to nuts, Everyone and Everything doesn’t shy away from the darker side of being human, yet remains life-affirming in way that is refreshingly realistic. Pollyanna will not be found between these pages! There is no blatant “happy ending” but more a hopeful dénouement. And praise the literary gods, Yael does not get saved by finding romance.
Everyone and Everything is a delicious debut. One hopes that Cohen’s next novel is already at draft number three!
Reviewed by Tracey Korsten
Twitter: @TraceyKorsten
The views expressed in this review belong to the author and not Glam Adelaide, its affiliates, or employees.
Distributed by: Pantera Press
Released: September 2023
RRP: $32.99
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