All We Want Is Everything is a slim book but it is jammed with stories that drip with guts, bodily emissions, and heartache, told by narrators who long for a real connection. The writing is a clean right hook that lands with precision. …It’s a startling debut by one of my new favourite writers whose promise is clear and future looks bright. Write his name down because hopefully he’s going to be a big deal.

The 20 stories in All We Want Is Everything are hard and unforgiving, dragging the reader bodily through a world in which factory machines mangle workers beyond repair and clouds of birds descend on a city, turning it into a toxic wasteland of filth and unbreathable air.

Reading Sullivan’s visceral, understated prose is roughly equivalent to watching a train wreck–horrifying, yet compelling, at the same time. … Sullivan should be commended for his strong commitment to voice and his uncanny ability to plumb the depths of these characters. This is a bold and arresting debut.

Andrew F. Sullivan wields his prose swiftly, expertly, slicing away all soft flesh and precious angles to get to the hidden marrow of his characters unquiet lives and then, when all seems hopeless, twists the knife slightly toward a momentary tenderness that’s even more startling. All We Want is Everything is an unnerving, discomfiting, totally original debut.

Andrew F. Sullivan is a big burly writer, and in All We Want is Everything he gives us a big burly world, one that exists just beyond the edge of the world most of us like to think that we know. If you love fiction, the one name you must remember is Andrew F. Sullivan. Starting here and now, do not miss anything he writes.

In All We Want Is Everything, Andrew F. Sullivan assembles a collection of short stories that are at once tragic, mortifying and funny. Although Sullivan’s voice is evident throughout the seventeen stories, each is different enough that the narratives seldom feel repetitive. These are the kinds of tales you love to read but are glad are not happening to you, involving estranged family members, childhood memories and personal and financial struggles. “The Lesser Half of Sir John A. MacDonald,” about a man who has travelled the country to find a city that will not break him, is particularly strong.

All We Want Is Everything is darkly funny at times, graceful at others and gritty throughout–a good read for those who are interested in the way people ruin and trap themselves, and the way they learn to cope with a world that is reluctant to help.

There’s a mantra, for crafting short fiction, which claims “a good short story opens on a scene in progress, and never really ends.” A short story is a snapshot of a life in progress, focused on a pivotal moment in the character’s life. Sullivan embodies this mantra, and his snapshots are more like dark portraits of society’s underbelly; its most sinister desires and unspoken realities. From his catchy opening lines to his killer closing lines, there’s not a wasted word on the pages of this book, and you will, more than once, be picking your jaw up off your lap.