How It Works Out by Myriam Lacroix
How It Works Out
by Myriam Lacroix
Doubleday Canada, 2024; 240 pages; $29.95
Reviewed by Kristina Rothstein
How it Works Out begins with a lesbian couple finding a baby in the alley behind their apartment. They seem happy and not that surprised by the unusual development. They are already a cheerful family unit when they find a woman following them, the child’s mother who is dealing with an abusive boyfriend. Soon the three are contentedly living together. I was interested to see what would happen in the next chapter; however the next chapter is actually the first of seven additional scenarios which have a tangential relationship to the first one. The common thread is Myriam and Allison, the couple. In the stories that follow, though, they are rarely happy. They may be unhappy in petty and realistic ways — the way life often disappoints us or when things do not go our way — or there may be something darker and more twisted at play in their relationship. Each scenario goes well beyond realism, pushing into ridiculous and bizarre “what ifs” with great effect. The scenarios spiral into an unanticipated grotesque fantasy; a birthday party sends the couple into a desperate and manic running obsession; a skating accident leads to a severed finger and a hunger for human flesh. In “Anthropocene,” Myriam is a high-powered CEO and Allison an idealistic slacker who seduces her with dominance, while trying to balance the advice of her activist group. In “The Sequel,” they are a rich, lesbian power couple with a bestselling book on relationships, and their fake wedding leads to a comic-tragic death involving a salad.
This is a wildly innovative take on linked short stories; in one way, they’re all the same story told as an array of scenarios but this can also be understood as an experimental novel. The first story is told in the third person and the rest in first person, from one of the two characters’ perspectives. The world they inhabit is usually weird, ugly, sad, comic and confusing. Quite often the couple seem to hate each other, but this may just be an honest portrayal of how hard it is to remain positive about your partner all the time. In the darkness there is always dark humour.
“Love and the Dark” is the story which holds the key to everything: Allison leaves home to work on her anger issues, and Myriam meets a performer named Claire who at first she believes is actually Allison. Claire and Allison have almost the same history, but Claire met a mentor who believed (almost religiously) in clowning. It is this idea of clowning or “exorcism through exaggeration” which is the true project of the book. Claire explains to Myriam that it involves, “blowing up the worst parts of yourself, embodying them, spending time fashioning their outfits, practicing their walk, refining their ticks.” This is profound advice for individual characters, but is also the strategy that Lacroix uses to propel the action. Perhaps describing the oddest and most unflattering things that might happen between two people is a robust map towards a healthy partnership. The writing is powerful and confident and the ideas startling and strange.