Kate Doyle's debut, I Meant It Once, is a collection of sparkling prose that beautifully tangles life's changes, uncertainties, and self-discoveries into 16 stories. Each piece follows families, friends, roommates, and lovers on the most mundane and groundbreaking journeys of their lives. The inner musings of narrators follow moments of uncertainty for the future, longing for past selves and relationships, and the self-discoveries forced or warmly welcomed by the familiar scenarios of young adulthood. The stories follow the turmoil of college relationships, the evolution of childhood friendships, familial tensions, and more. "That Is Shocking" follows an embarrassing breakup involving heart-shaped scones, and "What Else Happened" highlights the unfortunate and humorous events making up a particularly bad semester on account of broken wrists and almost failed classes. Doyle links three stories ("This Is the Way Things Are Now," "Cinnamon Baseball Coyote," and "Like a Cloud, Lighter than Air") by the rivalries and inside jokes of siblings and parents. Each story is delightfully entertaining and often subtly profound.
The sharp, descriptive, and witty entries in this collection experiment with different forms of storytelling--from first- and third-person points of view--and, throughout the book, seamlessly intertwine characters, events, and emotions. Also interwoven into the collection are extraordinary insights into personal turning points, big and small, for young women--all equally vulnerable, honest, and intimate. Doyle's characters are brightly imagined and, at moments, darkly humorous. She captures womanhood's intense and precarious state of deciding whose expectations to rise to and whose to break away from. I Meant It Once is brilliantly conceived, written, and compiled. --Clara Newton, freelance reviewer