The Whole World Over revolves around a group of people living in New York City's West Village. At the center of this group is Greenie Duquette, whose bakery and catering business is on the rise, while her marriage to Alan declines. He's a therapist who is depressed and threatened by Greenie's success. When she's offered a job as personal chef to the governor of New Mexico, she jumps at the chance and takes her 4-year old son with her, leaving Alan behind. She also leaves behind Walter, a gay man who was one of her best friends and best clients. Walter struggles with a broken heart, and takes in a nephew to divert his attention from love. Other characters including Alan's sister, an animal rescuer named Saga, and an environmentalist named Charlie, all make the little decisions that ripple throughout all their lives. The events of 9/11 suddenly brings all these choices to a fresh perspective. Julia Glass (
Three Junes) has written a novel that has received mostly positive reviews with the New Orleans Times-Picayune saying, "I love this book for many reasons -- the lush poetic prose, the pointed insights, the complicated characters, the long and complicated plot, the world it allows readers to live in. Glass is a wise woman indeed -- she knows how families try our patience and break our hearts, even as they make us who we are; how choices, sometimes even the wrong ones, define our lives when we least expect it; how dogs win our hearts, how people need each other. Surely and smartly, she shows us what matters, what endures."
