How It Works Out
Myriam Lacroix
The Overlook Press, 2024, 240 pages
$27.00

Reviewed by Pelaya Arapakis

Myriam Lacroix’s exhilarating debut novel How It Works Out follows a sapphic love story spanning a series of alternate realities. At the centre of the novel are Myriam and Allison—two lovers who meet at a show in a run-down punk house in Vancouver. How It Works Out is guided by the question of “what if?” catapulting protagonists into a range of radically different hypothetical scenarios that present various outcomes to their relationship. With each chapter, a new setting is imagined. What if Myriam and Allison discovered an abandoned baby in an alley, named him Jonah, and raised him as their own? What if the only way to treat Myriam’s depression was cannibalism? What if Myriam and Allison were a dog and praying mantis who fell in love? What if the pair became a micro-celebrity couple after releasing a self-help book on lesbian relationships?

A work of autofiction, How It Works Out blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy. We bear witness to love blossoming and waning, moving through the rose-tinted, dream-like highs of early romance to the various states of relationship decay. As the novel progresses, scenarios become marked by a pervasive darkness that coincides with the gradual unravelling of the relationship. Throughout it all, Lacroix anchors us with her precise and lyrical prose that testifies to her literary origins as a poet.

In and amongst the satirically absurd backdrops is a striking vulnerability as the characters excavate their interior and exterior worlds in the search for clarity, emotional truth, and authenticity. In the chapter “How It Works Out,” Myriam confides in an ex-partner, “I love Allison…I want us to be right for each other” (70). Her heart-rending admission recalls an often difficult truth: love and compatibility are not always in harmony. These moments of fragility are again echoed in “Anthropocene,” where Myriam—addressing Allison—delivers the achingly omniscient line, “How many times do I have to let you go?” (190).

How It Works Out is an intoxicating and visceral journey filled with queer possibility, offering readers a surreal, witty, and poignant tapestry of the potentialities and pitfalls of love. It is a love story that is as unique as it is unforgettable.

Pelaya Arapakis (she/her) is a Sinister Wisdom intern based in Naarm/Melbourne. She is also a musician, cultural worker and freelance writer.