Let the Great World Spin meets My Name Is Lucy Barton in this novel set aboard an aging cruise ship bound for Bermuda, where growing tensions lead three strangers to confront their past regrets and imagine different futures.
It’s Sunday, September 16, 2001. Franny and her husband have traded in their elegant Park Avenue co-op for a suite on board the Sonata, a once-glittering cruise ship with a complicated history now long past its prime. Though they’re not ‘cruise people,’ Franny is determined to host the trip as planned because it’s her mother’s seventieth birthday, or chilsun, a major rite of passage celebrated by Korean families. But as her husband keeps pointing out, Franny and her mother aren’t close, and it is surreal—even wrong—to be on a cruise as the death toll from the attacks on 9/11 continues to rise.
Also on board is Doug, an aging actor and former star of Starlight Voyages, the hit Love Boat–style television series famously filmed on the Sonata. With few professional prospects, a now sober Doug has reluctantly joined his former castmates on a reunion cruise for fans of the show, but he dreads the dark specter of his past misdeeds. Meanwhile, Lucy, the only Black female graduate student in her department at MIT, has uncharacteristically accepted an invitation to join her roommate on the cruise during the height of recruitment season. Lucy’s impulsive decision reflects her growing ambivalence about the tech companies that are trying to hire her, including a new one with a strange-sounding name, Google.
All the World Can Hold beautifully explores how we balance our needs and our wants, as well as the regrets we live with and the chances to set them right. And though it’s not a 9/11 novel, it does remind us that while the great world spins, the interpersonal dramas don’t cease, even as more dire ones play out in the larger world.
Genre: Literary Fiction
It’s Sunday, September 16, 2001. Franny and her husband have traded in their elegant Park Avenue co-op for a suite on board the Sonata, a once-glittering cruise ship with a complicated history now long past its prime. Though they’re not ‘cruise people,’ Franny is determined to host the trip as planned because it’s her mother’s seventieth birthday, or chilsun, a major rite of passage celebrated by Korean families. But as her husband keeps pointing out, Franny and her mother aren’t close, and it is surreal—even wrong—to be on a cruise as the death toll from the attacks on 9/11 continues to rise.
Also on board is Doug, an aging actor and former star of Starlight Voyages, the hit Love Boat–style television series famously filmed on the Sonata. With few professional prospects, a now sober Doug has reluctantly joined his former castmates on a reunion cruise for fans of the show, but he dreads the dark specter of his past misdeeds. Meanwhile, Lucy, the only Black female graduate student in her department at MIT, has uncharacteristically accepted an invitation to join her roommate on the cruise during the height of recruitment season. Lucy’s impulsive decision reflects her growing ambivalence about the tech companies that are trying to hire her, including a new one with a strange-sounding name, Google.
All the World Can Hold beautifully explores how we balance our needs and our wants, as well as the regrets we live with and the chances to set them right. And though it’s not a 9/11 novel, it does remind us that while the great world spins, the interpersonal dramas don’t cease, even as more dire ones play out in the larger world.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Astounding and exquisitely written, Yun masterfully guides readers into the tender, fragile days following the 9/11 tragedy. With emotional precision, she unveils the inner lives of her three deeply nuanced characters, peeling back their insecurities one page at a time. An unforgettable portrait of grief, resilience, and our human connection." - Sadeqa Johnson
"Yun, ever the craftswomen, has the ability to couple the tragic with the mundane. The exquisite wonder of ALL THE WORLD CAN HOLDis to witness the life moves of grandly but painfully realized characters." - Edward P Jones
"ALL THE WORLD CAN HOLD is a marvel, a sweeping yet intimate novel that weaves together the lives of three strangers in the aftermath of a world-shifting event. As personal grief collides with widespread upheaval, their stories reveal the quiet, aching beauty of connection and the enduring pulse of hope. In intricately elegant prose, Jung Yun reminds us that even in the shadow of collective tragedy, individual lives still thrum with meaning." - Angie Kim
"Yun, ever the craftswomen, has the ability to couple the tragic with the mundane. The exquisite wonder of ALL THE WORLD CAN HOLDis to witness the life moves of grandly but painfully realized characters." - Edward P Jones
"ALL THE WORLD CAN HOLD is a marvel, a sweeping yet intimate novel that weaves together the lives of three strangers in the aftermath of a world-shifting event. As personal grief collides with widespread upheaval, their stories reveal the quiet, aching beauty of connection and the enduring pulse of hope. In intricately elegant prose, Jung Yun reminds us that even in the shadow of collective tragedy, individual lives still thrum with meaning." - Angie Kim
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