[In the following review, Knapp criticizes the improbable plot elements and Kennedy's overuse of profanity in Everything You Need.]

Nathan Staples is a successful novelist who lives on a coastal island in permanent retreat from the world. Unfortunately, there is no fleeing his tormented inner world, lavishly displayed over the course of 500 pages [in Everything You Need], a world driven by biting remorse, self-condemnation, and graphic plans for suicide. Why the desperation? Nathan is still in love with his former wife, Maura, who deserted him twelve years earlier, taking along their four-year-old daughter Mary and never to be heard from again. The lost wife and daughter are the object of Nathan's obsessions, and their loss his reason for chronic suicidality.

Unable to successfully hang himself despite elaborate efforts, Nathan reluctantly remains alive, and soon finds a reason to live. The writers “fellowship” on the island somehow lines up an internship for his long-lost daughter, now sixteen years old and herself an aspiring writer. Mary has no idea that Nathan Staples is her father. She was told her father had died, and also has no contact with her mother, since Maura abandoned her shortly after deserting Nathan, turning her over to the custody of two charming gay uncles. Despite all this abandonment, Mary is a healthy and insightful young woman, a beacon of stability compared to her father. Blissfully ignorant of his identity, she settles in on the island and tries to write. Soon, Nathan's close friend begins sending Mary anonymous letters informing her that her father is not only alive, but also close by and soon to reveal himself to her. The tension created by this situation leads nowhere, however, and six years later Mary is still in the dark. As the years go by, life events transpire for both Mary and Nathan: the death of Mary's uncles and of Nathan's best friend, visits by both Nathan and Mary individually to Maura in London, and Mary's troublesome first love affair. Nathan mentors Mary, but never reveals the truth to her, preferring to remain in his vicious circle of deception and guilt, swept along by huge amounts of alcohol.

Mary, whose favorite adjective is wonderful, doesn't seem to be much of a writer, nor does Nathan, who is hard pressed to find an adjective not beginning with f (the tiresome overuse of profanity dents the book's readability). The plot, initially promising, stagnates as more and more years pass with no progress. Nonetheless, A. L. Kennedy wields a forceful pen. In syntactically sophisticated sentences that almost snap with emotional intensity, she weaves her characters' complex perceptions into riveting narration, commanding the reader's full attention.

Like her previous novel, Original Bliss, this one devotes its intense narrative focus to an eccentric, often patently dislikable protagonist in the throes of self-abasement. And there is no resolution—even with his daughter in the same room, Nathan is not released from his self-induced isolation and alienation. Ultimately, Kennedy's message is a larger one, about life—where often enough, once choices are made, there are no resolutions—and about the all-consuming narcissism of the artist, that is more likely to lead to pain than to truth.