Payal has spent her life trying to meet her parents’ checklist of expectations: Marriage, check. Working for her father, check. House in the suburbs, kids with perfect husband…. well, she’s working on that part. She’s waiting to be happy, or at least, not be a disappointment—unlike her brother Amit, who became an actor and yet seems to still be beloved no matter what he does, and her perfect little sister Shruti, who has just announced her own pregnancy.
When Payal’s mother announces a surprise trip to India, the strain in Payal’s marriage increases. Her husband Bryan refuses to miss his own family Christmas for her family’s wedding in suburban Mumbai, leaving Payal to maintain the façade of a happy marriage alone.
Increasingly scrutinized and isolated in her uncle’s flat in loud, crowded Mumbai, Payal desperately tries to reconcile with Bryan. Meanwhile, her father announces plans to retire and make the unqualified Amit a co-owner, and her mother decides to single-handedly fix Payal’s baby problem by picking out an egg donor whether Payal wants one or not.
Everyone but Payal seems to know exactly how to fix her marriage, solve her problems, and make her happy. Surely everyone can’t be wrong?
Sonal Champsee’s work appears in anthologies, magazines and newspapers, such as The New Quarterly, Today’s Parent, and The Toronto Star. Her debut novel, Everyone Can’t Be Wrong, was a finalist for the 2022 HarperCollins/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction. Sonal lives in Toronto, Canada.
With her distinctive warmth, wry humour, and subtle incisiveness, Sonal Champsee conjures the anxious feeling of being trapped inside our own second-guessing, following everyone else’s ideas of who we should be until we no longer recognize ourselves. Everyone Can’t Be Wrong pushes back against the endless “supposed-tos” that too often stand in the way of truly knowing—and loving—who we really are.
-Jessica Westhead, author of Avalanche and Worry
No one has dramatized the push-and-pull of being an immigrant child, the way family and cultural duties swallow up individual wants, as well as Sonal Champsee does in her funny, warm-hearted novel EVERYBODY CAN’T BE WRONG. Champsee writes with compassion, authority, verve, and never wastes your time.
–Kevin Chong, THE DOUBLE LIFE OF BENSON YU
Everyone Can’t Be Wrong is a gorgeously written novel by Sonal Champsee. Champsee is a longtime champion of upcoming Canadian writers, and her depth of knowledge of the craft is clear in this book. Descriptions shine, luscious details sparkle. Every metaphor is multi-layered. Sharp dialogue gives great insight into each characters’ motivation and desires. I truly admire the way the author approaches her reader with openness and trust, inviting us fully into every scene.
The main character of the novel, Payal, is one of the most loveable I’ve met in fiction. Payal is so deeply caring, a perpetual people-pleaser, and yet her insecurities are painfully exploited by those around her. The protagonist is flawed, messy, imperfect, and wonderfully relatable.
This gorgeously written story will feel familiar to anyone trying to balance multiple cultures and their competing pressures, anyone who has felt torn between individual self-fulfillment versus the demands of a collective. It is a book for anyone who has felt how the pressure to live up to expectation can be consuming.
From the first line, this novel never lost my attention and when I finished it, I only wished for more. I won’t forget these beautifully rendered characters, who, for a time, felt like my family too.
– Kirti Bhadresa, AN ASTONISHMENT OF STARS
