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by Lauren Mechling
After a devastating break-up with her fiancé, Geraldine is struggling to get her life back on track in Toronto. Her two old friends, Sunny and Rachel, left ages ago for New York, where they've landed good jobs, handsome husbands, and unfairly glamorous lives (or at least so it appears to Geraldine).
Sick of watching from the sidelines, Geraldine decides to force the universe to give her the big break she knows she deserves, and moves to New York City. After she arrives, though, and zigzags her way through the downtown art scene and rooftop party circuit, she discovers how hard it is to find her footing in a world of influencers and media darlings. Plus, the magazine where Sunny and Rachel work is on the brink of folding. Rachel is struggling to juggle her life as a writer, wife, and new mother--how is it that she was more confident and successful at twenty-five than in her mid-thirties? And Sunny's life as a popular West Village tastemaker is not nearly as charmed as it seemed to Geraldine from Toronto. Perhaps worst of all, why are Sunny and Rachel--who've always been suspicious of each other--suddenly hanging out without Geraldine?
Hilarious and fiercely observed, How Could She is a novel of female friendship, an insider's look into the cutthroat world of New York media--from print to podcasting--and a witty exploration of the ways we can and cannot escape our pasts. In Geraldine, Sunny, and Rachel, Mechling exposes how women can pragmatically manipulate one another in life and in love, and how the glamour, energy, and hope of New York City doesn't deliver for everyone, but sometimes, in the most unexpected and delightful moments, embraces those who have just the right amount of hope and delusion.
"While the novel flits lightly on the surface, even occasionally bordering on satire...there is a profound and wistful melancholy at its core. Not especially groundbreaking but emotionally astute; a pleasure." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Mechling turns a sharp eye on the relationships between women in her first adult novel... Though the characters' shallowness and relatively minor problems may turn off some readers, this is nevertheless a breezy, entertaining romp." - Publishers Weekly
"A modern twist on the 'just moved to New York' story by focusing on three women in their mid-thirties, stumbling through their lives while trying to keep up appearances." - Town & Country
"Lauren Mechling's portrait of the ramifications of female friendship is so razor-sharp and accurate I found myself wincing as I read. I know these women; I am these women: flawed, conspiring, neurotic, and loving. Very few writers can entertain and still reveal deep pathos--Mechling has done it flawlessly." - Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter
"What a hilarious, devastating, yet humane representation of a gratifyingly specific slice of New York life! How Could She is at once a compulsively readable catalogue of 'painfully curated' (Mechling's phrase) outfits, menus, emails, guest lists, and magazine assignments, a true-and mysterious-feeling portrayal of the way friends' relative statuses fluctuate over time, and as wise and unforgiving as a nineteenth-century French novel." - Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot
This information about How Could She was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lauren Mechling has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The New Yorker online, and Vogue, where she writes a book column. She's worked as a crime reporter and metro columnist for The New York Sun, a young adult novelist, and a features editor at The Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Harvard College, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.
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