I Love the Whole World! (Victoria Hannan, Penguin)

In her third novel, I Love the Whole World!, Victoria Hannan (Kokomo, Marshmallow) takes a more playful, straightforward and fun tone than readers may expect, though familiar themes of mothers and their adult daughters and enduring friendships remain.

Leslie is 43, recently divorced, and the winner of an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas. Freed from a life that feels as though it has simply happened to her, everything is suddenly new, from the plane ride and visiting the Grand Canyon to staying at the Luxor Casino and seeing the land art of Michael Heizer. Each encounter Leslie has presents her with a different future she might choose to live.

Set in 2000, the novel cleverly weaves through cultural details from the era, including U2’s music and Joanne Harris’s novel Chocolat, without becoming too obvious or overly referential. Leslie herself is very much of the period and is drawn with both honesty and genuine love. She can be daggy and even ignorant, but the book never treats her with a snide or arch attitude. Leslie is the hero of the story, and her delight in the world is contagious.

Sunnier atmospheres can be hard to pull off without losing momentum or sliding into the saccharine, but Hannan succeeds, and the result is a joy to read.

I Love the Whole World! is a sweet and entertaining read that will appeal to fans of Elif Batuman, Miranda July and Olivia De Zilva.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Adalya Nash Hussein is a writer and the editor of Loom Literary Journal. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

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