"Melissa Malouf writes with a directness that instantly captures our attention...Joan and Ernest are as uncanny and memorable a duet as any I've read. "In It Had to Be You," we follow the precarious, at times joyful, always mesmerizing tightrope walk of their marriage, which goes from high wit and passion to severe melancholy, and finally to estrangement. Very smart, very savvy, and frightfully modern in the way she navigates us through the sexual labyrinth of our time, Ms. Malouf writes with wild freedom and hard edge all at once. This novel emanates a kind of wry, anxious, erotic...
"Melissa Malouf writes with a directness that instantly captures our attention...Joan and Ernest are as uncanny and memorable a duet as any I've read....
Alice Clark has been trying to avoid an acute state of "not-knowing" about what's happened and what's happening. Whatever happened has much to do with why three of her friends died early and badly and she did not. Alice is a mess, and her story is a mess too--digressive, disheveled, and wild. She takes us across the United States in an overdue effort to find out what part she's played, or failed to, in her own life. Along the way she revisits her memories and meets a variety of "Cheshire cats," who in scary, rude, and seductive ways help her to keep going and find things out... or not.
Alice Clark has been trying to avoid an acute state of "not-knowing" about what's happened and what's happening. Whatever happened has much to do w...
