How It Works Out

How It Works Out

Summary

What if you had the chance to rewrite the course of your relationship, again and again, in the hope that it would work out?

'A cause for celebration' GEORGE SAUNDERS

'A beautifully brilliant, hilariously sad stunner of a debut' NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH

'Hilarious, heart-rending... Utterly brilliant' DAISY JOHNSON

When Myriam and Allison fall in love at a show in a run-down punk house, their relationship begins to unfold through a series of hypotheticals:

What if they became mothers by finding a baby in an alley?

What if the only cure for Myriam’s depression was Allison’s flesh?

What if they were B-list celebrities, famous for writing a book about building healthy lesbian relationships?

How much darker - or sexier - would their dynamic be if one were a power-hungry CEO, and the other her lowly employee?

From the fantasies of early romance to the slow encroaching of violence that unravels the fantasy, each reality builds to complete a brilliant, painfully funny portrait of love’s many promises and perils.

Reviews

  • What an audacious, breathtaking and inspiring debut. The power of this formally innovative and deeply funny book is that everything exists to serve the compassionate heart at its core. Myriam Lacroix's work is a cause for celebration
    George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo

About the author

Myriam Lacroix

Myriam Lacroix was born in Montreal to a Québécois mother and a Moroccan father. She has a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from Syracuse University, where she was editor in chief of Salt Hill and received the New York Public Humanities Fellowship for creating Out-Front, an LGBTQ+ writing group whose goal was to expand the possibilities of queer writing. She currently lives in Vancouver.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more