How Could She

April 15, 2019
Mechling's first novel for adults is a sharp dissection of the fraught dynamics of 30-something female friendship. In their first years of adulthood, Sunny, Rachel, and Geraldine worked together at a Toronto magazine, where they became, if not a trio--Sunny and Rachel never got along--then at least an intimate triangle. And then they scattered: Sunny, an artist and illustrator whose life has always flowed with an ease befitting her name, moved to New York and married rich; Rachel, a confessional lifestyle writer and an American, returned to her native Brooklyn, where she married a nice man, had a baby, and took up a fledgling second career writing YA novels; and Geraldine, the unlucky one despite her beauty, who stayed in Toronto and who--since getting dumped by her fiance--has been living in Sunny's old apartment, a demonstration of Sunny's magnanimity. And then Geraldine moves to New York. This, in itself, does not disrupt their equilibrium, though it does expose the fissures. What disrupts their equilibrium is that, in New York, amid a dying industry, Geraldine is a success. The plot is minimal, in terms of what actually "happens"--Sunny's glamorous life is not so glamorous; Rachel worries she's wasted her career on fluff; Geraldine gets into podcasting; media is flailing; men are difficult--because what actually matters is what's happening in the characters' heads. Their relationships to each other are delicate and often painful but also essential to their understanding of their own adult lives: More important than liking each other, they've built their identities around each other. Mechling details these dynamics with accountantlike precision so that the action is in the small slights and hurts and oversights that have accumulated over the years between them. While the novel flits lightly on the surface, even occasionally bordering on satire (Mechling, herself a journalist, is well-acquainted with the absurdities of the media industry), there is a profound and wistful melancholy at its core. Not especially groundbreaking but emotionally astute; a pleasure.

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April 22, 2019
Mechling turns a sharp eye on the relationships between women in her first adult novel (after YA novel Dream Life). Geraldine Despont, Sunny MacLeod, and Rachel Ziff—all 37—are old friends. They all met while working as junior staff at a Toronto weekly newspaper in their 20s, and their paths have wildly diverged since. Sunny is the most obviously successful of the trio, making a career as a watercolor artist and ensconced in a picture-perfect marriage to an architect husband. Rachel, a native New Yorker, is struggling as a young adult novelist but has a beautiful daughter and an adoring husband. Geraldine, once engaged to the owner of the paper where they all met, is feeling stalled personally and professionally. Her decision to move to New York and get into podcasting has surprising consequences for her, Sunny, and Rachel’s relationships, opening old wounds and dredging up past betrayals. Mechling is particularly insightful when it comes to the envy and affection that marks friendship, and clearly delights in writing Geraldine as the New York ingénue. Though the characters’ shallowness and relatively minor problems may turn off some readers, this is nevertheless a breezy, entertaining romp.

May 1, 2019
Sunny, Geraldine, and Rachel have dipped in and out of one anothers' lives for decades. Friends, colleagues, rivals: their combined relationship defies easy explanation. Newly single Geraldine, the trio's hub, leaves Toronto for new opportunities in life and love in New York City. Scatterbrained Sunny's recent success as an artist allows her to live comfortably without changing her outlook on life. Rachel is a pragmatic writer who spends more time composing perfect tweets than working on her next YA novel. Now that they're all in the same city again, inside jokes, lost loves, and old grudges pop up everywhere. Tackling relationship problems, parenthood, and career changes, they learn that they're undoubtedly stronger together than they are apart. Journalist and YA novelist Mechling's whip-smart portrait of female friendship is perfect for fans of Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings (2013) and Beverly Gologorsky's Every Body Has a Story (2018). Mechling excavates the layers of envy, support, and respect that fill the cracks in any long-term relationship. With an insider's view of today's media landscape, How Could She is a delight.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)