When Drita hears news of Nadia’s passing, she doesn’t imagine the death will set her life in a new direction. Nadia is the mother of her estranged twin’s girlfriend, and the grandmother of a nephew she scarcely knows. But upon discovering her nephew and his mother in Nadia’s filthy, abandoned apartment, Drita will find herself asking unfamiliar questions about family ties and obligations.
In Everybody Says It’s Everything, Xhenet Aliu returns to the small-town Connecticut setting of her debut novel, Brass, to deliver the story of a family who seem to have little in common with one another. There’s Drita, proper, astute and anxious about her worth; Pete, considered a failure by his twin sister and, secretly, himself; Shanda, a young mother proving herself to be wiser than old habits made her appear; and Jackie, the wheelchair-bound matriarch who started the chain of events that brought this group together when, searching for meaning, she adopted Albanian twins.
Aliu’s strengths as a writer shine through her altogether captivating and specific characters. As the perspective switches between chapters, so does the third-person narrator’s voice. Readers will find themselves immersed in each character’s respective inner world through their vivid sarcasm, self-doubt or aloofness. Aliu’s unique and imaginative descriptions leave her readers with an empathetic understanding of their conflicts. Yet her themes are enumerated subtly: Without addressing them directly, Aliu makes masterful observations about identity, family relations, male validation and where freedom truly lives.
The casual, modern voice of Everybody Says It’s Everything will lead readers gently through a landscape of inner questioning, where they can expect to find themselves empathizing with the characters, while also understanding the scope of their flaws. By the end, through the woven stories of Drita, Pete, Shanda and Jackie, Aliu helps us see how to weigh the responsibilities we owe our families and those we owe ourselves.