Built with weighted language that all but drips with emotion, All We Want is Everything isn't a collection that can easily be sped through or digested in a few days, but with each story packed with power and images as well as situations that might easily break a few hearts, the book is absolutely worth sinking into and spending some time with. Sullivan's language and themes are so careful, and the stories' situations and characters so realistic, it's difficult to remember that you're reading fiction. Everything simply feels too real, too vibrant...and just slightly absurd, in the way of those real-life stories that we're horrified by and yet can't help relating to others, whether to self-sooth or share the everyday horrors people experience every day.

It's also worth noting that this is an extremely varied collection. So often, a single-author collection gets so bogged down in similar characters, themes, or situations that it becomes repetitive by the end. Sullivan's short stories never allow that feeling to set in, and with so many of the stories being on the short side, that's all the more impressive.

For readers like myself, I have to offer a warning that there are a lot of images and moments related to dead/dying animals, and I admit those made it especially tough for me to get through some of the stories. BUT--and this is a big 'but' that I don't think I've ever felt such a need for--those images and moments serve a purpose. So much of the collection is built around a need and desire to escape what is inescapable, whether what can't be escaped is a situation, person, event, or even a feeling. There's a feeling of entrapment that comes on if you read through the stories too quickly, because the collection is just that real, and while Sullivan never goes overboard or reaches for the shock value that so many writers would be tempted to employ, his careful use of graphic imagery and death aid those feelings of entrapment and escapism, highlighting how much humans are, at least in his stories, just so trapped as a helpless animal left to deal with a situation it cannot or will not be allowed to understand.

In another writers' hands, these images would have chased me away from a collection. In Sullivan's hands, the images were so pointed, so careful and respectful, that they only made me push forward--even if I did sometimes need a break between stories.

Some of my favorites in the collection included "In a Car in a River Outside Peoria, Illinois," "Thaw," and "Mutations."

I'd absolutely recommend this short story collection. Take your time with it, sink into the stories one by one, and you'll be a better writer and reader for it. I know I am. ( )

The only reason I didn't give this collection of short stories five stars is because...well, there's twenty stories here...and each one almost serves as the first chapter to a novel. I want to know more about every one of the sorry bastards Sullivan gives us a glimpse into.

Andrew Sullivan has a unique writing style that simply captivated me. It shouldn't work, and it shouldn't work so consistently, but it does. He'll give you a line of dialogue, or a quick paragraph of what's happening currently, then the next paragraph fills in some backstory, just a snippet. Then he's back to current for the next line of dialogue, then back into the backstory again. It should be frustrating to read, but instead it sets up a wonderful suspense and conflict very quickly.

And then, there's the stories themselves, often more like extended vignettes, small glimpses into the lives of some incredibly broken, sad and damaged people. It's like Sullivan has found the personal life story of every person that the rest of us pretend not to see as we go through our lives. But here, in these stories, we can't look away. There's not really a single hero to be found here. These are the anti-heroes. These are the people that can't make a good decision to save their lives. These are the desperate and lonely and they're the endlessly fascinating fodder for Sullivan's stories.

And his writing is lean and tight. Twenty stories, twenty killer opening lines. Twenty glimpses into lives that, when each is finished, after a frustrated pause to consider what comes next, there's the realization that what comes next will never be good, and you silently thank god that you aren't one of them. That this is only fiction.

Sullivan is a stunning new voice. And now, I simply cannot wait to see what he does with a full-length novel. ( )