I Meant It Once
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
'I Meant It Once explores longing, belonging and the big emotions that can make us feel small with unusual elegance and depth' Coco Mellors, author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein
'Gorgeously written and staggeringly honest . . . It will bewitch you' Tess Gunty, author of The Rabbit Hutch
'I Meant it Once signals the arrival of a major talent and voice' Brandon Taylor, author of Booker Prize Finalist Real Life
'I was enraptured by these stories... Perfect for fans of Greta Gerwig' Edel Coffey
With this sharp and witty debut collection, author Kate Doyle captures precisely that time of life when so many young women are caught in between, pre-occupied by nostalgia for past relationships - with friends, roommates, siblings - while trying to move forward into an uncertain future. In "That Is Shocking," a college student relates a darkly funny story of romantic humiliation, one that skirts the parallel story of a friend she betrayed. In others, young women long for friends who have moved away, or moved on. In "Cinnamon Baseball Coyote" and other linked stories about siblings Helen, Evan, and Grace, their years of inside jokes and brutal tensions simmer over as the three spend a holiday season in an amusing whirl of rivalry and mutual attachment, and a generational gulf widens between them and their parents. Throughout, in stories both lyrical and haunting, young women search for ways to break free from the expectations of others and find a way to be in the world.
Written with crystalline prose and sly humour, the stories in I Meant It Once build to complete a profoundly recognizable portrait of early adulthood and the ways in which seemingly incidental moments can come to define the stories we tell ourselves. For fans of Elif Batuman, Ottessa Moshfegh, Patricia Lockwood, and Melissa Bank, these stories about being young and adrift in today's world go down easy and pack a big punch.
'Perceptive, funny, forthright, and often alarmingly relatable, I Meant It Once is a tremendously good debut' Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Doyle's brutally honest debut collection explores the joy and disappointment of familial, platonic, and romantic relationships. "Two Pisces Emote About the Passage of Time" follows 27-year-old Christine as she attempts to adjust to life in New York City after her roommate moves out of state, lamenting her sense of disconnect from her past while simultaneously sensing her ominous, growing obsession with the city ("New York has symbolic weight for me"). In "What Else Happened," Hannah struggles with her academic choices in college but won't admit it, fiercely believing that she needs "people to think that whatever was happening to me, I had planned it exactly that way." Failing to achieve in the classroom, she quietly dismantles the relationships around her and only finds peace on her own, in a different country. After an explosive family dinner, the unnamed narrator of "We Can't Explain" wonders how to share her family woes with her current love interest—"years of this, and how will I explain to you?" Doyle exposes family dynamics with humor and sincerity, skillfully exploring the interplay between devotion andbetrayal. Readers will savor Doyle's bracing blend of witand candor.