I Want Everything

An unnamed, aimless young writer leaves hospital and wanders to his local pool, where he spots a face he thought had vanished from public life: Brenda Shales, the reclusive author of two cult feminist novels who disappeared decades ago amid a plagiarism scandal. When the old woman mistakes him for her estranged grandson, he does not correct her, and a lie is born that he is not sure he wants to end.

Under false pretenses, he insinuates himself into Brenda's life, hungry for the story of what really happened to her and for the literary fame a tell-all biography might finally bring him. Over the weeks that follow, she confides secrets about her novels and the lawsuit that ended her career, and the narrator's deception deepens, one evasion at a time, until he has painted himself into a corner from which there may be no honest exit.

Winner of the Readings Prize and the MUD Literary Prize, Dominic Amerena's debut is a sly, unsettling novel about authorship, ambition, and appropriation. It asks who owns a life story, and what a writer is willing to steal to tell one.