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The Fullness of Everything
When Winston receives a telegraph from his mother informing him of his father’s imminent death, he reluctantly returns to Jamaica after 25 years of teaching history in the United States, having avoided contact with his family. Never considering how his relatives regarded his silence, mutual resentments cause a series of painful encounters and memories of an abusive father, a betraying mother, a favored brother, a sister lost in an accident, and a younger half-sister. Told from the perspectives of both Winston and his estranged brother, Septimus, this powerful tale combines psychological realism and magical elements as they seek to heal their longstanding breach. Absorbing and poignant, themes of forgiveness, transcendence, and human possibility are explored as death reverberates through each relationship.
240 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2009
142 people want to read
About the author
Patricia Powell
5 books2 followersPatricia Powell is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Mills College. She is the author four novels, including Me Dying Trial, A Small Gathering of Bones (Beacon Press, 2003), The Pagoda (Harcourt, 1999), and The Fullness of Everything (Peepal Tree Press, 2009).
Excerpts from her novels as well as her short stories have been widely anthologized, and she has lectured and led creative writing workshops in literary venues both nationally and internationally.
In 1993 Powell was a finalist for Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists Award. Among other prizes, she is the recipient of a PEN New England Discovery Award, The Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award for fiction, and The Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award. Powell’s fifth novel is forthcoming.
Excerpts from her novels as well as her short stories have been widely anthologized, and she has lectured and led creative writing workshops in literary venues both nationally and internationally.
In 1993 Powell was a finalist for Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists Award. Among other prizes, she is the recipient of a PEN New England Discovery Award, The Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award for fiction, and The Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award. Powell’s fifth novel is forthcoming.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 8, 2022
Powell KNOWS how to write and she shows us in this novel!
THE FULLNESS OF EVERYTHING opens with Winston receiving a telegraph (yeah… I don’t know what that is either) from his mother in Jamaica telling him his father is about to die and he needs to come come. Winston left Jamaica over 25 years ago and never returned any communication from his family, he is actually shocked that they know where to find him. With his personal life in shambles and a lot of unfinished business to clear up with his family, particularly his father he decides to go back home…after 25 years. What Winston encounters upon returning back home, shakes his entire life.
He finds his father on his death bed, but still cannot bring himself to forgive him for all the abuse he inflicted on him and his mother while he was growing up. His mother is still taking care of his father and his brother holds a lot of resentment towards him for being left behind. What he never imagined was finding out he’s got a much half sister that his mother is taking care of. Winston is overcome by all this and doesn’t know how to process it. Can he forgive his father before he dies? Will his brother forgive him? What will happen to his half sister?
I LOVE a good family drama and Powell kept me intrigued for the entire book. I wanted to know what would happen, does this person get to be forgiven? Will this family heal? The book was beautifully written and believable. The characters were not likeable but you get to look pass their flaws and accept them for who they are. I particularly love how the author dealt with the theme of forgiveness- it was not contrived but realistic and I appreciated that.
A well written #ReadCaribbbean book that I cannot recommend enough.
THE FULLNESS OF EVERYTHING opens with Winston receiving a telegraph (yeah… I don’t know what that is either) from his mother in Jamaica telling him his father is about to die and he needs to come come. Winston left Jamaica over 25 years ago and never returned any communication from his family, he is actually shocked that they know where to find him. With his personal life in shambles and a lot of unfinished business to clear up with his family, particularly his father he decides to go back home…after 25 years. What Winston encounters upon returning back home, shakes his entire life.
He finds his father on his death bed, but still cannot bring himself to forgive him for all the abuse he inflicted on him and his mother while he was growing up. His mother is still taking care of his father and his brother holds a lot of resentment towards him for being left behind. What he never imagined was finding out he’s got a much half sister that his mother is taking care of. Winston is overcome by all this and doesn’t know how to process it. Can he forgive his father before he dies? Will his brother forgive him? What will happen to his half sister?
I LOVE a good family drama and Powell kept me intrigued for the entire book. I wanted to know what would happen, does this person get to be forgiven? Will this family heal? The book was beautifully written and believable. The characters were not likeable but you get to look pass their flaws and accept them for who they are. I particularly love how the author dealt with the theme of forgiveness- it was not contrived but realistic and I appreciated that.
A well written #ReadCaribbbean book that I cannot recommend enough.
February 28, 2011
dear lord what an intense book. i'd like to blame this god-awful nyc winter for my crying several times throughout, but let's be real. the book was tough & emotionally deep & unrelentingly honest. i feel so overwhelmed by the book in terms of content and craft, i don't even know how to begin. how about bullet-points:
1. content--ok so a novel about a dying relationship, a dying patriarch, about tending to the dead, about the spirits of the dead who stay about us, about the past that won't die right away. this is why it took me a few months to read this book--i just couldn't handle such intensity in one reading. i mean, geez, even reading a 2 page chapter in the first 5 minutes had me tearing up. but did i appreciate the subjects? yes. it's difficult to do dying relationships and dying people without becoming sentimental. and PP really treats the subjects fearlessly, looking at how smelly and funny and sad and liberating they can be, all at once. and because she is fearless, she is willing to go deep into a subject--even rape and abandonment--and i think this depth and probing had me reeling and in awe.
2. structure--the book is split primarily between two brothers' different views of the same history/situation; and it is amazing that PP handles both with so much patience and compassion, willing to revisit the same scenes from a different POV and with such range of insight. here is one brother, the emotionally removed professor up in cold-ass boston who visits his family in jamaica after many, many years, and contributes to his father's death. then there is the favored (and also emotionally remote) caretaker brother who has stayed in jamaica and whose marriage/family life is falling apart. PP gets so deep into their individual, divergent psyches, that it's kinda surprising to remember that the brothers began with the same trajectory and that the same tragedies propelled them in their unique directions. her layered, intricate, and sympathetic portrayal of these men is a real testament to her imaginative powers and skills. their journey too, of reconnecting and guiding each other towards some kind of healing, requires some careful and attentive plot-development that also speaks to PP's skills as a writer.
3. magical realism--i am a believer, i am. i think it really captures the experience of people from non-normative, non-western cultures. and i loved its use in this novel--how its use was itself a metaphor for the undying past, how it gave shape and resonance to the little girl rosa's reality and understanding of the world and plot around her. (she was, btw, my favorite character, for her combination of insight, sweetness, strangeness, and rage.) i also appreciated the presence of new age-y/hippie kind of stuff, vaguely eastern spirituality-connected, that does run in some boston and island circles i've known. and how the use of these in the story reflected how i've seen it used, in order to connect with others, with oneself, and to think through almost unbearable situations.
4. language--the language is more structured, more reined in than in "the pagoda," which i also loved (tho it's an entirely different kind of book). i appreciated the fluidity of the language, how the sentences really focused on leading you into the emotional story between characters rather than glimmering as words on the page. in fact, there were very few places where the language was showy, and when it was, it was entirely dazzling and earned. i mean, there's one unforgettable passage where two ex-lovers realize they'll never be together again and the way the words are structured, yet so simply too, to depict the sky, a bowl of fruit, the bodies is just breathtaking. i think it was partly the spare honesty of the language that made for the unsparing power of the book.
5. landscape--in "the pagoda" too, i loved how committed PP remained to depicting Jamaica as a complex racial and and class society. while this book was far less obviously about history, it still did a beautifully subtle and complex job of depicting a society that is still very rural, very rich with lore and tradition and ways of speaking, with certain heavy expectations of both men and women, with the close feeling of a small community right up against the lush natural world. i liked the depictions of boston too--perhaps more affectionate than my recollections of it are--but very detailed and accurate portraits of that old, stony, intellectual city.
well that's about all i can handle saying, tho there's so much more. the book is like a prickly, luscious fruit that yields a great deal for the great deal it demands of the reader. for the longest time, i didn't understand the title, but now i do.
1. content--ok so a novel about a dying relationship, a dying patriarch, about tending to the dead, about the spirits of the dead who stay about us, about the past that won't die right away. this is why it took me a few months to read this book--i just couldn't handle such intensity in one reading. i mean, geez, even reading a 2 page chapter in the first 5 minutes had me tearing up. but did i appreciate the subjects? yes. it's difficult to do dying relationships and dying people without becoming sentimental. and PP really treats the subjects fearlessly, looking at how smelly and funny and sad and liberating they can be, all at once. and because she is fearless, she is willing to go deep into a subject--even rape and abandonment--and i think this depth and probing had me reeling and in awe.
2. structure--the book is split primarily between two brothers' different views of the same history/situation; and it is amazing that PP handles both with so much patience and compassion, willing to revisit the same scenes from a different POV and with such range of insight. here is one brother, the emotionally removed professor up in cold-ass boston who visits his family in jamaica after many, many years, and contributes to his father's death. then there is the favored (and also emotionally remote) caretaker brother who has stayed in jamaica and whose marriage/family life is falling apart. PP gets so deep into their individual, divergent psyches, that it's kinda surprising to remember that the brothers began with the same trajectory and that the same tragedies propelled them in their unique directions. her layered, intricate, and sympathetic portrayal of these men is a real testament to her imaginative powers and skills. their journey too, of reconnecting and guiding each other towards some kind of healing, requires some careful and attentive plot-development that also speaks to PP's skills as a writer.
3. magical realism--i am a believer, i am. i think it really captures the experience of people from non-normative, non-western cultures. and i loved its use in this novel--how its use was itself a metaphor for the undying past, how it gave shape and resonance to the little girl rosa's reality and understanding of the world and plot around her. (she was, btw, my favorite character, for her combination of insight, sweetness, strangeness, and rage.) i also appreciated the presence of new age-y/hippie kind of stuff, vaguely eastern spirituality-connected, that does run in some boston and island circles i've known. and how the use of these in the story reflected how i've seen it used, in order to connect with others, with oneself, and to think through almost unbearable situations.
4. language--the language is more structured, more reined in than in "the pagoda," which i also loved (tho it's an entirely different kind of book). i appreciated the fluidity of the language, how the sentences really focused on leading you into the emotional story between characters rather than glimmering as words on the page. in fact, there were very few places where the language was showy, and when it was, it was entirely dazzling and earned. i mean, there's one unforgettable passage where two ex-lovers realize they'll never be together again and the way the words are structured, yet so simply too, to depict the sky, a bowl of fruit, the bodies is just breathtaking. i think it was partly the spare honesty of the language that made for the unsparing power of the book.
5. landscape--in "the pagoda" too, i loved how committed PP remained to depicting Jamaica as a complex racial and and class society. while this book was far less obviously about history, it still did a beautifully subtle and complex job of depicting a society that is still very rural, very rich with lore and tradition and ways of speaking, with certain heavy expectations of both men and women, with the close feeling of a small community right up against the lush natural world. i liked the depictions of boston too--perhaps more affectionate than my recollections of it are--but very detailed and accurate portraits of that old, stony, intellectual city.
well that's about all i can handle saying, tho there's so much more. the book is like a prickly, luscious fruit that yields a great deal for the great deal it demands of the reader. for the longest time, i didn't understand the title, but now i do.
February 2, 2015
Easy to call this book powerful and affecting.
And how?
Powell combines poetry and insight to stirring effect.
More difficult to describe what the novel is about, but I'll try:
Winston is a Jamaican immigrant, living and teaching history at a college in Boston. He has not been home in 25 years, has not called, has not returned a single letter or postcard because of a hurt that has turned to rot in his chest. When he eventually returns - his father is dying - he discovers a half-sister too young to be his father's child, and a brother seething with resentment and rage. His mother, too, is angry and sad.
The novel shifts from Winston's viewpoint to that of his brother, Septimus. Both have extremely painful stories to tell - open sores, if you will - and together, they must learn what it is to move past the hurt, and grow to love fully, openly, with the full strength of their beings.
Perhaps this a novel, then, about love and healing and growth.
Re-readable.
And how?
Powell combines poetry and insight to stirring effect.
More difficult to describe what the novel is about, but I'll try:
Winston is a Jamaican immigrant, living and teaching history at a college in Boston. He has not been home in 25 years, has not called, has not returned a single letter or postcard because of a hurt that has turned to rot in his chest. When he eventually returns - his father is dying - he discovers a half-sister too young to be his father's child, and a brother seething with resentment and rage. His mother, too, is angry and sad.
The novel shifts from Winston's viewpoint to that of his brother, Septimus. Both have extremely painful stories to tell - open sores, if you will - and together, they must learn what it is to move past the hurt, and grow to love fully, openly, with the full strength of their beings.
Perhaps this a novel, then, about love and healing and growth.
Re-readable.
March 19, 2023
It’s a beautifully written book about trauma, pain, healing, unspoken feelings, perspectives; it’s raw, deep, dense, with a strong pull towards the bottom of a well. We’re all broken, we’re all right and wrong when it comes to family and relationships. I was deceived by the mere 220 pages and so: this beautiful novel is to be savored with patience. Absolutely sad and wonderful altogether.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews