How You Lose (Hardcover, 1st Carroll & Graf ed)

How You Lose is a remarkable work of fiction in which a constellation of artfully linked stories follows a young woman named Melody, the man who shot her, Alex, and several people whose lives intersect briefly with Melodys in a succession of meaningful coincidences. The book opens as Melody revisits her empty house and relives the night, a year earlier, when she and her father were shot in the head by an intruder during an attempted robbery. She turns at the last moment and is only grazed by the shot; her father dies. In the poignant concluding story, Melody goes unannounced to the prison, ten years after the crime, to confront Alex and to ask him Why. How You Lose is distinguished not only by its compelling themes and all-too-human characters, but by the elegant orchestration of the stories: They stand alone, but as the book progresses, they crescendo into a whole that is something greatermore resonantthan the sum of its parts.