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by Kyle McCarthy
In this propulsive debut novel about the dark side of female friendship, old habits give way to obsession and betrayal when a young woman reconnects with her estranged childhood best friend.
At age thirty, Rose is fierce and smart, both self-aware and singularly blind to her power over others. After moving to New York, she is unexpectedly swallowed up by her past when she reunites with Lacie, the former best friend she betrayed in high school. Captivated once again by her old friend's strange charisma, Rose convinces Lacie to let her move in, and the two fall into an intense, uneasy friendship.
While tutoring the offspring of Manhattan's wealthy elite, Rose works on a novel she keeps secret—because it stars Lacie and details the betrayal that almost turned deadly. But the difference between fiction and fact, past and present, begins to blur, and Rose soon finds herself increasingly drawn to Lacie's boyfriend, exerting a sexual power she barely understands she possesses, and playing a risky game that threatens to repeat the worst moments of her and Lacie's lives.
Sharp-witted and wickedly addictive, Everyone Knows How Much I Love You is a uniquely dark entry into the canon of psychologically rich novels of friendship, compulsive behavior, and the dangerous reverberations of our actions, both large and small.
"Rose grows into one of the more complex—and, sometimes, plainly repugnant—characters of recent fiction...McCarthy's debut, with the acumen of the best literary fiction and the suspense of a psychological thriller, is a marvel." - Kirkus Reviews
"McCarthy's pitch-dark tone extends outward from her narrator to the rest of the cast of characters, all motivated by self-interest and most even less self-aware than Rose. This is a deliciously incisive tale." - Publishers Weekly
"Everyone Knows How Much I Love You is breathless and precise at once, utterly gripping, animated by the propulsive unfolding of hungers that can't be controlled or fully fathomed. It aches with insight and longing. It seduced me from the very first page with the pull of its own fierce gravity, like a darkly turning planet—its atmosphere swirling with mysterious, combustible desires; its truths merciless and bone-deep." - Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of Make It Scream, Make It Burn
"Everyone Knows How Much I Love You is masterly, mendacious, and a total thrill ride. I was hooked instantly, laughing alongside Rose, alternately cheering and chastising her entanglements and escalations. McCarthy is an edgy writer and the prose is all at once darkly comic, sexy, and razor-sharp in its psychological insights. Not since a certain Mr. Ripley have I been so consumed in another's covetous desires." - Justin Torres, bestselling author of We the Animals
"A suspenseful, sexy, and gorgeously written excavation of best-friend envy. I read it with horror. And recognition. And great delight." - Michelle Huneven, author of Blame and Off Course
"This novel gripped me from its first page. A New York story crackling with obsession; a dizzying, daring tale of lives shaken to their foundations by the tumultuous interplay of sex, death, and art, McCarthy's debut leaves an indelible mark on the reader's sense of the world. Unforgettable." - Evan James, author of Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe
"A wickedly smart, deeply readable novel about art, love, and friendship." - Caroline Leavitt, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Cruel Beautiful World
This information about Everyone Knows How Much I Love You 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.
Kyle McCarthy is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, American Short Fiction, and the Harvard Review, and she has received support and grants from the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Lighthouse Works, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
My Darling Boy by John Dufresne
The story of of a man whose son collapses into addiction and vanishes into the chaotic netherworld of southern Florida.
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