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Title details for I Meant It Once by Kate Doyle - Available

I Meant It Once

by Kate Doyle
Hannah Church
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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This "gorgeous, electric" collection of short stories is about the inner lives of young women during their transformative twenties, navigating relationships, nostalgia for the past, and the uncertainty of the future (Mary-Beth Hughes, author of The Ocean House).
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 humor, 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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 18, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781643755274
      • File size: 197131 KB
      • Duration: 06:50:41

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Booklist

      June 1, 2023
      In Kate Doyle's engaging debut story collection, friendships unravel, relationships combust, and families splinter. Young women wrestle with deep emotions and obsessive behaviors, imagining what might have been or what could be. They move back in with their parents after failures, and ruin relationships with new friends and lovers by fixating on those from their past. Helen, a recurring character, spirals into depression after the end of an important childhood friendship. In "Moments Earlier," Owen can't let go after the sudden and unexpected death of a friend. The uneasy narrator of "You Are with Me" considers motherhood, which she's not sure she wants, in order to repay her partner's kindness. In "Aren't We Lucky," twin sisters spar with their mother while living through the chaos of a home renovation. Doyle's narrators are complex and flawed; their struggles are utterly relatable to anyone who has questioned their choices or grappled with the end of a relationship.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 14, 2023
      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. Agent: Gráinne Fox, United Talent Agency.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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