Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
By Maile Meloy
240 pages;
Riverhead
Maile Meloy's Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It reads like a
Bruce Springsteen album sounds: raw with a tender wildness and loaded
with adolescent ache. The nuanced depictions of small-town life in some
of these stories ("He could have told her that her father was the first
person he had ever seen falling down drunk, but that seemed unfriendly")
make for a rich tableau of lovelorn cowboys, provincial lawyers, and
renegade women. Don't miss this sleeper hit.
— Kristy Davis
