Everyone Knows How Much I Love You
A Novel
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3.8 • 9 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
In this “tale of toxic friendship at its most riveting” (People), a young woman finds herself inexorably drawn to repeating the worst mistakes of her past.
“Masterly, mendacious, and a total thrill ride . . . Not since a certain Mr. Ripley have I been so consumed in another’s covetous desires.”—Justin Torres, bestselling author of We the Animals
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rose, the unhinged narrator of McCarthy's grimly comic debut, is the sort of childhood friend best left behind. In high school, Rose set her sights on Leo, the boyfriend of her best friend, Lacie. After Leo "wouldn't shut up" about Lacie while Rose was driving him to meet her in the middle of the night, Rose crashed her car and ran away, leaving Leo bloodied and unconscious. Twelve years later, Rose tracks down Lacie in New York City, where they both live. Rose is working on a novel about her youth and making ends meet as an SAT tutor, a job she lands after fudging her qualifications. Lacie is working as a graphic artist and dating Ian, a painter. Rose worms her way into sharing Lacie's apartment, and soon, in the best horror movie tradition, is costuming herself in Lacie's clothes, throwing herself at Ian, and generally taking possession of Lacie's life, with predictably disastrous consequences. A classic unreliable narrator, Rose glibly explains away even her most horrific actions. 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.
