Rating: 
Summary: Original story, interesting characters
Review: I'm glad to see Christina Schwartz getting some accolades, as I feel she is a great writer. While I enjoyed her first book, Drowning Ruth, I felt this book was even better. The story is gripping and pulls you in from the start. It was interesting to see the two friends lives affect each other in this story, and it was told in such an expertly written way that you can't help feeling for both sets of characters. The story is original and I enjoyed it. You will too.
Rating: 
Summary: Flat and boring. Undeveloped characters.
Review: I'm not going to go into the plot of the story because I feel that other reviewers have done an excellent job of summing it up. Basically, I felt that this book was incredibly boring. The first half of the novel is spent following around Margaret as she does every thing imaginable to avoid writing a book. While this gives the reader a deeper glance into Margaret's character, it also becomes excrutiatingly painful to read. After wading through a slow plot, the ending of the book really clinched it. Basically, Margaret ends up feeling guilty and tries to take the blame for the actions of her friend Letty (and the summary of the book leads you to believe that this could be some traumatic and scandalous ordeal when in truth it's just [bad]). Margaret isn't to blame- Letty is to blame for being too stupid to live. I had a hard time feeling sorry for Letty because she was self-indulgent and obviously lacked self-control. Basically, the characters were undeveloped and stereotypical, the plot was slow and boring, and the ending was [bad]. I closed the book not feeling sympathetic for either character. I think the author shows talent in her writing, but this was one concept that fell flat. Not worth the time to read.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: I'm so glad I didn't see the big O (Oprah!) on the cover of this one, or I probably wouldn't have picked it up. Instead, I checked it out on a whim at the library. All is Vanity is extremely well written. It alternates between the viewpoints of two characters - women who were friends since they were children. The letters are entertaining to read. The tone shifts subtly as the plot becomes urgent toward the end of the book. And things keep moving all the way to the end. Even when you've got only about 3 millimeters' worth of pages left to read, the story is far from reaching a conclusion and you're wondering WHAT is going to happen. The ending is a bit different. I wouldn't call it weak. I enjoyed the book from cover to cover. It was thoroughly entertaining to read, and also had many great morals as a bonus. I can't wait to read more by this author!
Rating:
Summary: An insightful and excellent novel
Review: I'm writing this review in response the baffling reader reviews already posted. Most of them mention that is not what they expected or wanted from the author of "Drowning Ruth". Having not read "Drowning Ruth" myself, I can say that taken as a work by itself "All is Vanity" is an excellent, even important, story, well told. The primary impetus of the protagonist, to as an adult live up to the ambitions and inflated self-image of her precocious childhood, is a tragedy waiting to happen, and it happens in an inevitable, funny and sad way. Excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Anxiety-Provoking
Review: If you are either an aspiring novelist or a chronic overspender, this book will make you distinctly uncomfortable. Since approximately 50% of the reading public is writing a novel, and 98% of the population spends too much money, you may recognize yourself. Many readers will instinctively cringe at Schwarz's mercilessly photographic rendering of Margaret and Letty, ever-hopeful novelist and overachieving spendthrift, respectively. I can vouch that this novel will linger in your conscience long after you finish it, like heartburn after a too good meal. Perhaps you are not as wildly grandiose as Margaret or as financially haphazard as Letty. Perhaps you are as self effacing and realistic as I am, since I relished every moment of this book. And the after-effects have been lasting. I have only a few minor grandiose fantasies left.
Rating:
Summary: A Scintillating and Thoughtful Black Comedy
Review: In some ways this book is similar to "I Don't Know How She Doest It"--both are contemporary urban comedies. But "All is Vanity" is a deeper and richer character study, and, while Schwarz writes with a scalpel--the book is a most dead-on and hilarious depiction of envy and ambition--she is making a number of important and unplaesant points about modern, upper-middleclass life and mores. This is a wholly satisfying--and sophisticatedly written--novel.
Rating:
Summary: Followed me everyhere
Review: Into the tub, in the car. I found the characters compelling and the themes disturbingly familiar. If you've ever once compared yourself to others at cocktail parties, wondering how you measure up, you'll enjoy this read. The novel addresses the the worm of envy and competiveness that lives within us all. I was surprised to see some many critical reviews because I was hooked to this book like an I.V. The first two hundred pages addresses the struggles of someone trying to be a writer and if you don't identify with that process I suppose you'd become bored, but I was fascinated. I relished every page and was sorry to see it end.
Rating: 
Summary: Quite Good and Highly Misunderstood
Review: Many of the reviews claim that one of the book's major faults is that the characters are a far cry from reality. I find the opposite to be true.Perhaps there is some embellishing involved but Margaret and Letty can easily parallel people in my own life who I have known since my own childhood and so I can say with much certainty that the both of them are not such unlikely people as you might think.
The one complaint that I do have about this book is that 2/3's of the book is build up and then the ending comes a bit too quickly, I think. If she could have played up the events in the end I think I would have been more satisfied. Especially with an ending that is tragic, I had a sense that it was a bit abrupt. Otherwise, I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes character studies especially. Fascinating!
Rating:
Summary: A midlife morality tale
Review: Margaret and Letty live out the fantasies of many people who, in midlife, seek career and life coaching. Ignoring the shelves of self-help books, the thousands of websites of potential helpers, they take the plunge and never recover. Margaret, who teaches English in a Manhattan private school, begins to wonder, "Where has my life gone?" Like many midlife career changers who ask this question for the first time, she wants an instant answer.And she comes up with one: She will take a year off and write a best-selling novel. Never mind the reality: she has never sold so much as a short story. She has no idea where to begin. She has no back-up plan and no idea what it's like to stay home chained to a word processor.
Let the folly commence! and it does. Author Schwarz mericlessly shows Margaret's creative ways to avoid her self-chosen mission: cleaning the house, painting the walls, buying multicolored pencils, even buying a book of names to bestow appropriate descriptors on her soon-to-be-created characters. And she unerringly portrays the advice given to wannabe writers from those who have never written a line: "I read that Hemingway always left his work in mid-sentence;" "Write the first third and the rest will be easier," and more. Schwarz accurately depicts what happens to those who blithely jump into a dream without a well-crafted safety net. Doors mysteriously close and bank accounts disappear faster than you expect. I am, however, surprised that Margaret's budget-driven husband would support this venture. Ted keeps detailed "ledgers" and has a knack for asking penetrating questions. How did he miss the big one? Meanwhile, Letty, in Los Angeles, succumbs to her husband's new job and dazzling new salary. Always carefree with their spending, the couple happily builds their dream on a foundation of plastic.
Letty's new world appears, finely detailed, through her emails. Margaret helps herself to Letty's writing talent which, we soon realize, is probably greater than Margaret's own. Letty's greed and concern with image seems realistic and inevitable: a naive housewife plunged into a world she can't comprehend, where she doesn't know how to say "no." Yet what I can't understand is why Letty keeps turning to Margaret, in a world where therapists abound on every corner. And a couple in their income bracket would be expected to have a financial planner. Then again, perhaps they moved too fast to learn the ropes along the way. Often midlife career changers brag about how much they earned but when asked, "How long can you live before you lose the house?" they sheepishly say, "I've saved up three months," or even, "Maybe a week or two." Margaret tries to help Letty, with predictable results. Soon Letty seizes what seems to be an unexpected windfall, and both friends are condemned (in one case, literally) to live out the consequences of their decisions. The end seems fast and unsatisfying, with no hope of redemption or growth for either character. In the end, despite the smooth writing, deft chaacterization and finely drawn settings, this novel seems more a morality tale than serious literary fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Vanity in all its ugliness comically exposed
Review: Margaret, an English teacher in a New York private school, makes the brash decision to leave her position and spend the next year writing a novel. In her infinite wisdom, she believes this will be an easy task despite never having published as much as a short story before. She has illusions of grandeur, that her best-selling novel will show the world how brilliant she truly is and turn her into the talk of the town. After spending several months having a great amount of difficulty "getting started" - she has no direction for her book and she procrastinates her time by doing a million other absolutely necessary things such as painting the room her computer is in a soothing color more condusive to writing - she realizes that she is in big trouble, especially since she's been lying to her husband and everyone else around her that the novel is going great and is halfway finished. Meanwhile, in L.A., her best friend Letty, the two of them inseparable since grade school, is having troubles of her own. Her husband has recently secured a position with the famous Otis museum, and Letty, who has been raising a family of four on a modest budget in a modest home,] is trying to transform herself into fitting her new "affluent" social position. She buys a house in the right part of town, near Beverly Hills, and then gets caught up with redesigning and redecorating the house in a way that keeps up with the Joneses, even though she finds the whole idea of that ridiculous on many levels. The two friends correspond via email and as Letty describes the daily "hardships" of purchasing the right club chairs and hiring the right gardener, Margaret finds inspiration in Letty's life. She begins writing a novel that mimics her best friend's new reality, urging Letty into financial burdens and social situations for which she is not suited or which she cannot afford just so that her novel has the necessary heightened tension and drama. The book mostly alternates between Margaret's narrative and Letty's email letters, and Schwarz gives us an entertaining (and on some level, horrifying) glimpse into the pretensions of the upper middle class, the folly of ambition, and the precarious bonds of friendship. Darkly comic and often clever, this novel is written briskly and lively enough to be effective for the story it's telling. If you're looking for a deep meaningful book, look elsewhere. Or, if you're one who has to like the
characters in order to enjoy a book, this might not be a good choice either. Because, certainly, it is difficult to like either of these women, but as a pair they serve up plenty of light entertainment.
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