I liked this novel less and less as I read it. By the time I finished the "revenge" chapter near the end of the book, I'd have to say I hated it. I loved Salter's A Sport and a Pastime (1967) and enjoyed Solo Faces (1979), and was eager to read this, Salter's first novel in over three decades. It feels like Salter taking his shot at writing The Great American Novel - a book spanning the post-war decades, bringing in dozens of characters, and shifting between the literary scenes of New York and London and Paris. The publisher blurb promises "a fiercely intimate account of the great shocks and grand pleasures of being alive." But that's not what I found in these pages. I found unpleasant, uninteresting characters drifting along unexamined lives, picking up and discarding others at whim and with ease, failing to create any meaning. Grand pleasures? Not hardly. If this is all that is, damn, shoot me now.

I've read other reviewers accusing this novel specifically, and sometimes Salter generally, of misogyny. And I can see it. His other novels I've read, which I did in fact like, are strongly male-centered points of view and they treat women as accessories, generally, and not always kindly. But this novel goes considerably further in its unflattering treatment of female characters, though the men often appear as assholes as well. I do find myself wondering if when he writes of a character

He didn't like women who looked down on you for whatever reason. Within limits, he liked the opposite.

he is succinctly describing his own attitude.

And I have to wonder why so many of the characters Salter creates here are said to be on their third marriage or so, even when the character only appears for a few pages and that information wouldn't seem all that important:

Kenneth Wells was his name. He and his wife - she was his third wife, he didn't particularly look like a man who'd been married a number of times, he was homely, his eyesight was bad; she had been married to his neighbor and one day the two of them had simply gone off to Mexico together and not come back - lived in a house that Bowman liked and that always stayed in his mind as a model.

Wells only exists for 3 pages.

Evelyn Hinds was a dumpling of a woman with bright eyes that took things in immediately and a ready laugh. She was at ease with people. Her first husband had crashed at sea - it was thought he crashed, no one ever saw him again - but she'd been married two times after that and was on good terms with both her former husbands."

Hinds exists for one page.

There are plenty of other examples. What's with the compulsion to give so many characters so many spouses? To show how much you don't believe in things like commitment?

So then there's the ugliest chapter near the end, in which our protagonist, Philip Bowman, seduces the college aged daughter of a former lover who betrayed him, flies her to Paris with him, fucks her a few more times, then abandons her alone in a hotel room with no money.

He had gotten up early and quietly gathered his things. She was sleeping, an arm beneath the pillow, a bare leg showing. The freshness of her, even afterwards. He had forgiven her mother. Come and get your daughter, he thought.

Well, at least she's still fresh, thank God, even after the deflowering by an asshole decades older than she is. Shit.
( )

This book had wonderful reviews so it was extra disappointing to me that I didn't care for it. Maybe I missed some deeper meaning along the way but I didn't enjoy Bowman's dysfunctional relationships with women. He was clueless and the women were portrayed as naive and/or sneaky and cruel. ( )

Mooi maar minder goed dan de recensies ( )

The history of my family and he didn't even change anyone's name. ( )

Tres décadas después de la publicación de su anterior novela, la aparición de Todo lo que hay constituyó el acontecimiento literario del año en Estados Unidos. Ambientada en las décadas doradas que siguieron a la Segunda Guerra Mundial, en ella se dan cita los temas, inquietudes y pensamientos que han ocupado a Salter toda su vida, ese afán permanente por capturar los espacios íntimos, evanescentes, que todos albergamos y dejarlos grabados en tinta sobre papel.
Tras participar como joven oficial en las batallas navales de Okinawa, Philip Bowman vuelve a casa y, después de pasar por Harvard, consigue un empleo en una pequeña editorial de renombre en Nueva York. En esa época, la edición atañe a un puñado de editoriales en América y Europa que desarrollan su negocio en una frenética actividad social: cócteles, cenas, encuentros en apartamentos de leyenda y conversaciones que se alargan hasta altas horas de la madrugada. En esos ágapes mundanos donde se fraguan acuerdos furtivos y se deciden carreras literarias, Bowman se siente como pez en el agua. Sin embargo, pese a su éxito profesional y a sus infalibles dotes de seductor, el amor duradero parece eludirlo. Cuando finalmente conoce a una mujer que lo fascina, Bowman emprenderá un camino que nunca había pensado transitar.