When All is Said Book Review
When All Is Said by Anne Griffin: Book Review
When All Is Said by Anne Griffin is built around a simple idea. Eighty-four-year-old Maurice Hannigan sits at the bar of a hotel and raises five toasts, each one to a person who mattered in his life.
Those five drinks become a way into the memories he has carried with him: love, resentment, regret, family and the things he wishes he had handled differently.
Five Toasts, One Life
Maurice is not a character who explains himself easily. Much of the appeal of the book comes from the gap between what he feels and what he has actually managed to say to the people around him.
His memories move through different stages of his life, but the story never feels like a list of important events. The five people he chooses to toast give the novel its shape.
Maurice and Sadie
The relationship that stayed with us most was Maurice’s marriage to Sadie.
Her absence hangs over the evening in the hotel, and Griffin is very good at showing a long relationship through ordinary memories rather than grand declarations.
The grief is there, but so is the humour and familiarity of two people who knew each other for years.
For readers
Why It Works
This is a relatively quiet novel. There is no complicated plot to keep track of and no need for a dramatic twist every few chapters.
Instead, the interest is in Maurice himself: what he remembers, what he regrets and what he understands differently at eighty-four than he did when he was younger.
Readers who like character-led Irish fiction will probably get more from it than readers looking for a fast thriller.
Our Verdict
When All Is Said is warm, sad and very readable. It is the kind of book that naturally leads to conversations about family and the people who shaped your own life, which is probably why it worked so well as a book-club read for us.
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The Book Resort Team x
