How It Works Out

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Surreal, darkly comic and achingly tender, Myriam Lacroix's exuberant debut sees a queer love story play out in many alternate realities

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

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.

Equal parts sexy and profane, unsentimental, and gut-wrenching, How It Works Out is a genre-bending, arresting, uncanny exploration of queerness, love, and our drive for connection, in any and all possible worlds.

'A cause for celebration'
GEORGE SAUNDERS, author of Lincoln in the Bardo

©2024 Myriam Lacroix (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

One of the quirkiest, and most rewarding, novels in recent memory
Toronto Star
Cinematic... sharply evoked
Daily Mail
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
Lacroix has written a beautifully brilliant, hilariously sad, stunner of a debut that never forgets about the heart
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars
Hilarious, heart-rending, grotesque, delightful, utterly brilliant
Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under
How It Works Out is madcap, delirious, exhilaratingly good
Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love
How It Works Out is a delightfully bizarre and unabashedly queer revelation; a truly captivating exploration of love. Myriam Lacroix's kaleidoscopic first novel invites you to embrace the unconventional and revel in the multiverse of 'what-ifs' we only wish we could explore in our own relationships. We loved it
Tegan and Sara Quin, authors of High School
I loved this book. It’s like nothing else I’ve read. Every single page kept me guessing – it's rare to read something so delightfully strange
Kirsty Logan, author of Now She is Witch
Myriam Lacroix knows exactly how macabre love can be. With a biting (literally) wit Lacroix devises a startling multiverse where finding the love of your life is just the beginning of a surrealistic quest
Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories
In How It Works Out, we see wonderfully different iterations of Myriam and Allison that all work together in the most satisfying and unexpected ways. Lacroix writes with a brave heart, a fiercely inventive mind, and a breathtaking ability to render it all in precise, stellar sentences. A hilarious, unsettling, and moving debut
Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document

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