All I Love and Know
by Judith Frank
William Morrow. 432 pages, $26.99
AN AIRPLANE might seem a clichéd place to start a story, but that, and an anguished reflection, are where Judith Frank begins her second novel, All I Love and Know. The protagonists are Matt Greene and his partner Daniel, who seem to be mismatched—and they both know it. Matt is the happy-go-lucky, easygoing youth who wears his heart on his sleeve. Daniel, by contrast, tends toward gloominess, often around his Jewish heredity.
The two men have a semi-committed relationship and live in Massachusetts, more-or-less happily, but their differences—and their different political outlooks—are brought to the fore when Daniel’s twin brother and sister-in-law are killed by terrorists in a café near their home in Jerusalem. This precipitates the opening plane ride, but a funeral isn’t the only reason for the hasty trip: Daniel’s sister-in-law had asked him to raise their children, six-year-old Gal and one-year-old Noam, in case of an emergency.
The road to parenthood for these two gay men who never considered becoming fathers is not a smooth one. There are two sets of grandparents to consider, lifestyles to alter hastily and drastically, plus legal matters and social workers to deal with on two continents. Readers won’t be shocked that there are problems between the two new, sudden dads: Daniel isn’t sure he loves Matt enough to want to co-parent with him, while Matt doesn’t feel appreciated for the changes he’s made or the chores he has undertaken. There are conflicting parental styles when the older child acts up, and a crisis of diarrhea precipitated by a baby in distress.
This confusion does not produce much comic relief, alas. And while this novel has all the markings of a tear-jerker—including a good bit of maudlin language and characters musing about their feelings—it doesn’t really go in that direction either. Then there’s that handful of semi-gratuitous digressions that involve fairly explicit descriptions of sexual activity. This comes as quite a surprise, since family dramas such as this don’t normally contain X-rated scenes—notwithstanding the one that is integral to the story. What’s more, the novel takes place over more than a year’s time in the characters’ lives—and feels it. There’s a lot of repetition, a lot of back-and-forth with peripheral cast members (in particular, Daniel’s mother) that adds little to the story. Several times it felt like the author was wrapping things up, only to plunge us back into the tale, waiting for an epiphany that never comes.
One could be forgiven for tossing this book aside lightly, were it not for Frank’s keen ability to convey the raw depths of feeling experienced by the main characters, whether grief over an irrecoverable loss or confusion in a chaotic situation. This doesn’t completely offset the tedium elsewhere in the story, but it does give Daniel, Matt, and the supporting players a realism that allows us to pick sides in their skirmishes, to feel delight when they find reserves of strength within themselves, and even to deflect one’s irritation when their lives become mired in overly wordy prose.
