How It Works Out

How does a relationship fall apart? And how does it fall back together? These are the questions Myriam Lacroix poses in her darkly comedic lesbian love/hate novel. Each chapter throws the two lovers, Myriam and Allison, into a different universe – they discover a baby, they become cannibals, they are a dog and a mantis. Throughout it all, the infinite possibilities of queer love remain central to the story, even when that love looks something like eating parts of your significant other.

Myriam is soft, often depressed, and sometimes a germaphobe. Allison is butch, often practical, and sometimes Myriam’s caretaker. How many times can these characters play out these roles? How often can Allison take care of Myriam before she becomes resentful? How often can Myriam be depressed before she gets angry? In giving these characters so many hypothetical universes, Lacroix provides them opportunities to grow up together, and also to grow apart.

As a foray into experimental literature, this text works extremely well. It is weird, sexy, challenging, and surprisingly funny. The love story seems all but doomed – except for when it works out. As a reader, I found surprising joy in trying on all these aspects of the characters’ love for each other, even when that love plays out as a form of torture, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Lacroix carves out space for queer possibility, and queer liberation. No one is condemned by the story before them, every chance is rendered anew, in all its weird, surreal and sometimes gory detail. This is an essential 2024 novel for readers of absurdism, queer texts, and horror – I hope you can discover how it works out