All of You Every Single One
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- £4.49
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- £4.49
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the Historical Writers' Association Gold Crown 2022
Longlisted for the Polari Prize 2022
'The exquisite story of two women trying to make a life together in wartime Austria, and all the love, friendship and danger that implies.' Sophie Ward
All of You Every Single One is an epic novel about family, freedom and how true love might survive impossible odds.
When Julia flees her unhappy marriage for the handsome tailor Eve Perret, she expects her life from now on will be a challenge, not least because the year is 1911. They leave everything behind to settle in Vienna, but their happiness is increasingly diminished by Julia's longing for a child.
Ada Bauer's wealthy industrialist family have sent her to Dr Freud in the hope that he can fix her mutism and do so without a scandal. But help will soon come for Ada from an unexpected quarter and change many lives irrevocably.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hitchman (Petite Mort) tells a preoccupying if underwhelming story of queer love in Vienna over the course of both world wars. Julia Lindqvist, 26, is unhappily married in 1910 when, during a vacation in France, she meets a young tailor, Eve Perret, who passes as a man. The women begin a loving, lifelong partnership in Vienna, where they try to find a way to live as a couple. Under the protective wing of Frau Berndt, they create a new family of neighbors and friends, but Julia yearns for a child. The narrative shifts perspectives between Julia, Eve, and other key people in their lives. Ada Bauer is abused by her foster brother, Emil, with whom glamorous hustler Rolf Gruber falls in love. Ada receives treatment from Sigmund Freud, but the other characters don't believe her claims about Emil; later, Ada and Rolf hatch a plot to help Julia realize her dreams. Hitchman makes good use of interwar bohemian Vienna, presenting it as a time capsule of relative permissiveness before the rise of the Nazis, though the happy ending after WWII feels far-fetched, and the cameos of such historical figures as Freud don't add much to the narrative. Though there are some bright moments, little distinguishes this in a crowded field.
