[REVIEW] All the Parts It Takes Literary Fiction Novel

All The Parts It Takes eBook cover

As a woman slowly losing her soul to Corporate America, I felt this book IN MY BONES.

4.5 stars

From the beginning, we get a taste of our FMC, Ella, and how the life she’s trapped in is mind-numbingly tedious. Although we do get some bits of comedy in moments like “Ella folded her arms, a human barricade against corporate enthusiasm.” [1]

And this all comes to a head quickly, as she learns early in the first chapter of her father’s death. While she wasn’t close to the man, it shatters her in unexpected ways.

The book, structured in chapters titled after what it takes to construct a new house (cute, maybe also clever?), is about how Ella tries to rebuild herself into the person she wants to be. And it is lovely. And painful. And quietly therapeutic. For a Literary Fiction novel, at least. (You'd expect it from a Self Help book!)

Some favorite spoiler-free quotes that felt like free therapy:

• “You don’t have to fix anything,” she said. “Just notice how much of your life you spend trying to earn what you already are.”

• “You’re not building a career anymore, you’re building a life.” <<this one hits HARD for me, as I am currently struggling with how much of my identity is tied to my career…

• “Money wasn’t the enemy. It was her relationship to it that had carved so much fear into her choices.”

I’d have to want to reread a book to give it a full five stars, and this one was too difficult to put myself through again. But this book will hold space inside my mind forever. Ella’s journey feels a lot like watching someone jump off a cliff, and you have no idea how or if they’ll land at the bottom. But you, too, are on the edge of that cliff, trying to decide if you want to jump or run back to safety.

It’s terrifying.

It’s exhilarating.

It’s a must read for anyone who wants or needs a change.

Now, I will say… if you are not a fan of the excessive use of simile, then this book might be hard to get through. For real, there were 6 different similes about tides! That’s 4-5 too many. [2]

You still need to read it, though. Especially if you are: female, queer, different, "too loud" / "too much," or just overall exhausted from performing a curated version of yourself for the world because you think they expect it. So go grab a coffee, a slice of “smug cake” (iykyk), and read this book.

Buy the book here.

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Notes:

[1[ If you don’t work in the corporate world, I’ll translate: “corporate enthusiasm” is the group-wide delusion of joy that management constantly tries to shove down employees’ throats to make them think they like work so that they’ll work harder.

[2] For funsies, I did a count of how many times the word “like” was used in the book. There are almost 650 of them in there… that’s almost 2 per page! (One page had 6 of them!) And while they weren’t all related to similes, most of the ones that weren’t belonged to some derivation of “felt like.” I found this super distracting, but maybe I just can’t turn the editor brain off? (If you read my last post, you'll make the connection between the example there and this footnote!)