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Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It

3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 · rating details · 2,845 ratings · 514 reviews

Award-winning writer Maile Meloy's return to short stories explores complex lives in an austere landscape with the clear-sightedness that first endeared her to readers.

Meloy's first return to short stories since her critically acclaimed debut, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It is an extraordinary new work from one of the most promising writers of the last decade.

Eleven...more

Hardcover, 240 pages

Published July 9th 2009 by Riverhead Hardcover (first published 2009)

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Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2009

22nd out of 100 books — 122 voters

Best Books of 2009

337th out of 1,229 books — 6,470 voters

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Nov 21, 2012 Chana rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: american, fiction-family-drama, short-stories

A friend of mine asked me to read this book as it had received good reviews but she wasn't impressed with it. She wondered what I would think. So here it is:
From the title, "Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It" I made the assumption that it was a book about relationships, a non-fiction book. And even though my usual reaction to pop psychology self-help books is a gag reflex, it probably would have been better than what this book turned out to be.
It is a book of fictional short stories about the...more

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May 15, 2013 ·Karen· rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, usa

This wonderful title is a quote from a poem by A.R.Ammons, and is an apt description of the quandary encapsulated in each of these stories. Often enough the wanting it both ways is the classic case of the husband hoping to keep both wife and lover, or hoping for the chance to juggle the two - funny how it's rarely a woman trying to keep all the plates spinning. But this is not the only kind of wishful thinking, there is also the child who regrets the departure of her mother's glamorous lover and...more

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Apr 20, 2011 Alan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Alan by: short review

Shelves: short-stories, read-in-2010

Meloy’s stories are flawless: the writing is clear and economic, the settings and ‘plot’ and characters conjured with minimum fuss. Altogether perfect pieces largely about adultery, and breaking marriages (or maybe not), but also about childhood incidents looming later, murder, rape, stalking and industrial accidents. The collection is aptly titled – the stories usually take the reader into a situation where a decision is about to be made, and often leave them with the outcome still in the balan...more

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Nov 08, 2010 Barbara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Meloy captivated me immediately with her skill and finesse. She has certainly succeeded well in the art of the short story. Each tale captures the essence of her characters with mirth, sympathy or suspense.
I appreciate the recommendation by my good friends in Goodreads and anticipate reading more by this author.

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Sep 29, 2011 alana Semuels rated it 5 of 5 stars

I usually don't go for collections of short stories -- usually the themes are so similar (immigrants have it hard, people cheat on their spouses, music is cool, that after the first few stories, I'm bored. Also, there's no plot egging you along, making it easy to put the book down. But I couldn't put this book down. The prose is gorgeous, the stories are simple and memorable. I read it in a day. If you're going to read one book of short stories, make it this one. Or Olive Kittredge. But this one...more

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May 25, 2013 Barksdale Penick rated it 5 of 5 stars

These stories are all set in Montana but feel different from each other. That is, some collections of stories have a consistent ambience, but these didn't, although there were some consistent themes. Infidelity and coming of age appeared in many stories, in tales that mostly seemed very true to life. There was one story with a shocking set of facts, but mostly it is about the rhythms and routines of life. The young man driving eight hours to say hi to a girl he liked, who had showed little inter...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Jo Case rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

The title of her fourth book is strangely apt for Maile Meloy. Her most recent novel, A Family Daughter, was a daring experiment in having it both ways, following the seductive literary soap opera that was her first. Liars and Saints followed the entwined lives of one Californian Catholic family, the Santerres, over sixty years. In A Family Daughter, Meloy resurrected a character whose death had been pivotal to Liars and Saints, making her the meta-fictional author of the original (and recasting...more

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Jan 22, 2012 M rated it 4 of 5 stars

Malie Meloy offers darkly sugary tales of people who want it all in this collection of short stories. Each one offers its characters a glimpse at past, present, and future, as they decide which way to pursue their dreams. A drifter seek the attention of an out-of-town teacher in "Travis, B." Young co-ed Layton finds herself on a camping encounter at the behest of her lawyer father and his desired client in "Red and Green." The titular "Lovely Rita" is at the center of a small-town heartbreak, wh...more

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Oct 15, 2011 Justin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Kiesha

Recommended to Justin by: Brett

Shelves: brett, highly-recommended

This book is collection of eleven short stories. I would never pick up a collection of short stories of my own volition. This collection, however, came highly recommended so I felt compelled to give it a chance. I liked it, or I should say, them. I cannot say that I have changed my mind on short stories, only that I liked this collection - helped in no small part that many of the stories were set in Montana.

The title provides the unifying theme of the collection. And I guess it was the theme th...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Jill rated it 5 of 5 stars

To write short stories, you need to be a bit of a magician. You need to pull characters out of a hat, breathe life into them, and weave a spell around the willing reader. Maile Meloy has that gift. Her 11 transfixing short stories are the only way you’d want them – effortless, genuine, and sometimes unpredictable.

In all these stories, the characters are faced with a choice (not unlike Robert Frost’s “Two Roads Diverged”). One choice usually takes them in a stable direction; the other freedom and...more To write short stories, you need to be a bit of a magician. You need to pull characters out of a hat, breathe life into them, and weave a spell around the willing reader. Maile Meloy has that gift. Her 11 transfixing short stories are the only way you’d want them – effortless, genuine, and sometimes unpredictable.

In all these stories, the characters are faced with a choice (not unlike Robert Frost’s “Two Roads Diverged”). One choice usually takes them in a stable direction; the other freedom and risk. These ordinary people – parents, children, doctors, lawyers, ranchers, wives, plant workers – get to the cusp of their moral quandary and then choose one way – or other.

Take her short story The Children. A man facing a midlife crisis is about to tell his eminently intelligent wife that he is about to leave her for a younger woman. With great suspense, we wait for the revelation to come. But he ultimately realizes that he was “doomed to ambivalence and desire. A braver man, or a more cowardly one, would simply flee. A happier or more complacent man would stay and revel in the familiar, wrap it around him like an old bathrobe. He seemed to be none of these things and could only deceive the people he loved…”

Or take the first story, Travis, B. A shy Logan, Montana rancher with a limp from childhood polio meets a young teacher – Beth Travis – who is reluctantly traveling miles twice a week to teach an adult education class. He drives miles to pursue her and then goes home unfulfilled with just the ghost of his yearning.

Then there’s The Girlfriend: a mourning father confronts the girlfriend of the man who raped and killed his young daughter. “He had thought his faith in order was gone, but it wasn’t true. He had sought consolation in knowing and arranging the facts.” But in the end, he really doesn’t want to know.

One more: the ending story, O Tannenbaum. A Montana family – Everett, Pam, and their young daughter – are driving home with a Douglas fir tree on Christmas eve and stops to pick up two stranded skiers with the fortuitous names of Bonnie and Clyde. The push-pull of the threat of “disorder and the steady” thrums a promise of having everything Everett wanted, all at once.

Taut, disciplined, and filled with moral force, this collection deserves its designation from The New York Times Book Review as one of the 10 Best Books of 2009.
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Jun 09, 2011 Jeruen Dery rated it 4 of 5 stars

I revisited the short story genre again. And once more, I found one that I liked.

Both Ways is a collection of stories that deal with emotional and psychological conflicts across several people centered around Montana. Every story features two or three people dealing with romantic relationships, and the cute thing about this collection is that I am impressed with the way the author paints a complicated picture about these people in just 20 pages per story.

All the tension occurs at the psychologic...more I revisited the short story genre again. And once more, I found one that I liked.

Both Ways is a collection of stories that deal with emotional and psychological conflicts across several people centered around Montana. Every story features two or three people dealing with romantic relationships, and the cute thing about this collection is that I am impressed with the way the author paints a complicated picture about these people in just 20 pages per story.

All the tension occurs at the psychological and emotional level, and perhaps, the most attractive thing this book has to offer is the fact that every story seems to begin in medias res and and ends abruptly. There isn't a build-up and a resolution. The reader enters the drama in mid-air. And perhaps, that is a way that the author trusts the readers, that the readers would be capable of building the relevant background needed to fully understand the drama.

The book consists of 11 short stories. It starts with stories relating to Montana, but somehow, this theme goes away near the end, and I couldn't see the connection to Montana for the final couple stories. But perhaps this is just a minor thing that isn't meant to be a flaw.

Another thing this book features is that it deals with the most complex human emotions in such a short medium. In Travis, B., the author paints the picture of long-distance unrequited love involving 8-hour drives across the state of Montana, and horse-rides in the middle of winter. In Two-Step, the story paints the picture of two women who are friends, and one of them opens her heart out to the other woman in order to complain about her husband who she suspects is having an affair. Little did she know that it is her friend that he is having an affair with. A little comedy is also in order, which is provided by the story entitled Liliana, which is about an old matriarch who was reported to be dead two months before, but is live and kicking in Los Angeles giving his offspring a visit.

In short, I believe this is a good book to provide one with a sampler of the complexity of human emotions, giving the reader a glimpse of every shade. 4 out of 5 stars.(less)

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Apr 24, 2011 Patrick Faller rated it 2 of 5 stars

Meloy's is another collection of stories that is burdened by its reliance on formal constraints. The collection's title establishes the thrust of each piece--characters stuck between a rock and a hard place, forced to choose. This would be okay if not for the fact that short fiction as a genre rests of just such a convention. Short stories are constructs that dramatize the motivations and consequences of choices taken. It's a bit of letdown when Meloy brandishes the central convention of all goo...more

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Nov 29, 2010 Denise rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It is a collection of short stories mostly featuring men and women living in the fringes of the American West. They inhabit those small, western towns were people still have one foot in older, more simple ways and one foot edging into the fast-paced, more technological world. The stories are written in a plain, honest language that feels natural for the setting and characters.

In general I'm not a big fan of short stories. They either draw me in and then leave me...more

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Sep 10, 2010 Andrew rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was 2 stars most of the way, but got up to 3 in the latter stages, which makes me wish there were a 2.5 star out there in the Goodreads universe. I was looking forward to this, b/c I remember really liking her first collection. This, however, was just okay. I'm sure expectation affects my reading, but as with another acclaimed loved-by-every-critic collection, Wells Tower's "Everything Ravaged...", these stories (with the exception of "Lovely Rita," most of "Augustin," and parts of "Th...more

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Jul 22, 2010 Maggie Tiojakin rated it 4 of 5 stars

To be honest, I expected BIG things from Maile Meloy's "Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It" -- because before I got to know the author, I was exposed to all kinds of excellent reviews which appeared in a number of well-respected publications. So, when "Both Ways" was chosen to lead the 2009 list of "Best Books of The Year" in The New York Times -- I thought to myself: I have to HAVE it! Nevertheless, with me living halfway across the globe (Indonesia) -- purchasing this book took quite a bit of...more

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Feb 06, 2010 Barry rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: american, literature, short-stories

What a find! Maile Meloy, I suppose, is not newly found. It seems the heavyweights of the industry have heaped honours on her since her debut collection of stories in 2002. But she’s new to me and Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It is one of the best books of 2009.

This is an author with talent to burn but we get no writerly pyrotechnics. Meloy is confident enough to rely on her clear, unadorned prose to propel us along. Her stories flow, swiftly as a Montana stream, and get us there scarcely be...more

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Jan 18, 2010 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010

It was short story time this weekend, as I hunkered down with this collection, Wells Tower's "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned", and "On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction" by Karl Iagnemma.

This was the winner of the bunch, though Wells Tower came in a close second. I liked almost all of the stories in this collection ("The Children" was the only exception, so that Meloy's batting average was 10 out of 11), and a few, "Lovely Rita", "Liliana" and "Agustin", were true standouts.

It's...more

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Dec 31, 2009 Younkin Pete rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009-a-list

I had never read a book by Maile Meloy, heck, I'd never even heard of Maile Meloy before I read this book. I'm not sure how I learn about "new"(to me) authors or how I decide whose books to read, it's not a very systematic process, but I'm glad it lead me to this book.
This is a collection of stories largely set in Montana, with a range of characters who speak in similar ways(as opposed to Nam Le, where each story could have been written by a different author, there is a clear voice here). The...more

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Dec 26, 2009 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: library-loan, 2009, essays-and-short-stories, i-loved

I'm constantly bringing home short story collections in an attempt to read them. While I generally find the idea of doing so irresistible, I rarely get through the first story, let alone the first few pages. When I do I'm left feeling cold, as if I've missed something I was supposed to understand.

Having come across the New York Times' list of the best books of 2009 by chance while at the library, I decided that I -had- to bring home the book deemed the best of ten given my strange attraction to...more

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Aug 25, 2009 Rose rated it 4 of 5 stars

I should probably work on my bank of cliches, but both ways is exactly how Maile Meloy dishes it out: Her spare prose + that bull’s eye take on the human condition = Literature (yes, with a capital L).

As an undergrad I had an English professor tell me the short story genre was not a real one, that true Literature (literature with a capital L) could never call itself such under 250 pages. Needless to say (but in case it’s not), this professor’s specialties were 18th-century and Victorian novels....more I should probably work on my bank of cliches, but both ways is exactly how Maile Meloy dishes it out: Her spare prose + that bull’s eye take on the human condition = Literature (yes, with a capital L).

As an undergrad I had an English professor tell me the short story genre was not a real one, that true Literature (literature with a capital L) could never call itself such under 250 pages. Needless to say (but in case it’s not), this professor’s specialties were 18th-century and Victorian novels. The highly demanding publishing expectations of that time caused writers like Anthony Trollope to develop such writing habits of producing 1000 words per hour for three hours on weekdays - all this before heading to work at the post office. The end result was more than a few 1025+ page gems like The Way We Live Now. Trollope’s dedication paid off: He published 70 works over his lifetime, 47 of those being novels, and proved a successful and respected (!) author by Victorian and current standards.

Meloy may not pump it out like Trollope, but her latest short story collection, Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, is right up there with his work on my nightstand, with its punchy reflection of the author’s time and its making a perfect nighttime read.

Written in spurts between drafts of her two previous novels Liars and Saints (2003) and A Family Daughter (2006), Meloy’s much anticipated second collection explores the conflicts of human emotion through characters who struggle to connect with themselves and the worlds around them. Her characters disappoint themselves and those closest to them, and it is their vulnerabilities and flaws that make them shine in their own purgatories.

Both Ways‘ highlights for me were “Liliana,” in which a grand and flighty granny comes back from the dead, and “O Tannenbaum,” Meloy’s odd take on embracing the Christmas spirit. Both stories are bittersweet tales about family with uncomfortable depictions of marriage tensions, and looking back, my reading these two pieces was more of a hope of failure for Meloy: With so little space, how will she pull this one off?

With no attention to consequences, that’s how. For Meloy, the meat of the story comes wrapped in the moment - the moment of conflict when hypocrisy or dualing emotions within a single character is OK and quite true - and usually under 20 pages.

Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy (Riverhead, 2009)(less)

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Jul 13, 2009 Lisa rated it 5 of 5 stars

This one's as solidly stunning as her first collection, Half in Love. Few flashy plot points, zero flashy sentences, but a confidence in the telling so acute that the characters' lives stay with you for a long time. And Maile gets the West the way few writers do--the comfort and anxiety of slow open spaces, the barreling toward progress and development and peopled places not inconsistent with the ache for untouched land. Put down everything else you're reading and read this one.

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Jun 08, 2012 Stephen Gallup rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was feeling bogged down in a novel with too many characters and just happened to notice this short-story collection on my shelf. I have no idea where it came from, but it jumped into my hands and for a while practically seemed to be reading itself.

The title and supposed theme of the collection has to do with choices in life, but I don't find that part really compelling. All fiction involves people making choices, right? The theme of agonizing over one option or another is most obvious in the...more

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Oct 21, 2009 Sherry rated it 4 of 5 stars

"One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it." A. R. Ammons. So begins the introduction to Maile Meloy's second short story compilation "Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It". Eleven tales skillfully navigate the uncertainties people feel when they create tension between wanting something and having something: fidelity vs. desire; risk vs. stability; maintaining innocence while seeking experience. Meloy paints a portrait of the landscape of the heart: resilient, yet so dan...more "One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it." A. R. Ammons. So begins the introduction to Maile Meloy's second short story compilation "Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It". Eleven tales skillfully navigate the uncertainties people feel when they create tension between wanting something and having something: fidelity vs. desire; risk vs. stability; maintaining innocence while seeking experience. Meloy paints a portrait of the landscape of the heart: resilient, yet so dangerously close to fragility; hopeful, yet full of disappointment or regret.

I get the sense that Meloy had keenly felt male, parental abandonment or neglect during adolescence or young womanhood. At the very least, she understands how vulnerable young women are as they come of age. “Red From Green”, “Lovely Rita”, “The Girlfriend” and “Nine” demonstrate this understanding. In “Spy vs. Spy”, lack of open communication between a father and his young adult daughter keep them emotionally distant, while a fun-loving but somewhat vulgar uncle (the father’s brother) forges a deeper connection with his niece.

In “The Children”, Meloy shows how very powerful coming of age can be for women who understand how to manipulate men’s desires. In fact, the two main protagonists well explore all three of the aforementioned dynamics between wanting and having. In “The Girlfriend”, Meloy demonstrates how manipulation can backfire and be destructive to the woman. The married couple portrayed in “O Tannenbaum” is dangerously close to severing their union as they dance around fidelity vs. desire and risk vs. stability for the second time in their short marriage.

“Agustin” and “Travis, B.” portray excellent examples of Meloy’s hopeful, yet sorrowful heart. The protagonist in “Travis, B.”, Chet Moran, also exemplifies the mature, unfortunate, innocent man seeking romantic experience. Through its thoughtful eleven stories, “Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It" explores multi-faceted emotional journeys.
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May 13, 2011 Xiuqin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 21, 2012 Peter rated it 3 of 5 stars

What does one do when one is sick on a Saturday Night? Apparently, one drinks Yogi Digestion Tea (One was out of Throat Comfort) and writes Goodreads reviews at 9:40.

Part of me thinks that if I wasn't suffering from a bad cold with side effects of crabbiness I would have given this book a better review. As it stands, I think it's more in 3.5 territory. It's a good collection of stories, and there are some gems to be sure. But ultimately, for me, Meloy's greatest strength was also her greatest w...more What does one do when one is sick on a Saturday Night? Apparently, one drinks Yogi Digestion Tea (One was out of Throat Comfort) and writes Goodreads reviews at 9:40.

Part of me thinks that if I wasn't suffering from a bad cold with side effects of crabbiness I would have given this book a better review. As it stands, I think it's more in 3.5 territory. It's a good collection of stories, and there are some gems to be sure. But ultimately, for me, Meloy's greatest strength was also her greatest weakness. That dual quality: the spare, condensed quality to her tales.

Much of the time this brevity comes off as a lovely, understated grace, a light touch that comes from a seasoned short story writer. Time passes smoothly and quickly. Personal histories unfold and disappear before you even know they are important. An entire story might rest on the turn of moment that doesn't even seem like a climax: whether or not someone turns a car around, makes a phone call, or returns an embrace. Sometimes the sum of these small gestures creates an ethereal beauty, a perfectly struck note that lingers long after the story is over.

Other times, I couldn't help feeling like some powerful material had simply been rushed.

There are varying philosophies about whether a good story should leave you wanting more, or if it should feel complete and perfect in its own compact wholeness. Sometimes I wish I thought the former (it seems more like life and wiser somehow), but damn-it-all, I like the latter. I like the feeling that the author had one stab at these lives, this moment, and they gave us everything they had. Some of the stories in this collection felt brilliant in their combined degree of depth and brevity. Others felt like they were just an introduction into a world cut short.

It should also be mentioned that the title of the collection really acts as a central theme that unites these stories. Nearly all of these tales end on moments of indecision or a feeling of wanting contradictory outcomes. And I like the theme. It seems to flout the idea, so often present in fiction, that a character has one strong central desire. But, more often than not, don't we have a thousand conflicting desires? Meloy's contention that her characters always want two things at once seems downright subversive in moments when you think about it in terms of character motivations. But, again, it also leads to stories that can feel prematurely brought to a close or needlessly complex. I felt, during a few of her endings, that she was warping things intentionally to conform to her collection's thesis statement. Just a little bit.

On the whole, I enjoyed these stories. Every one of them is a story worth telling, and the human interactions at their core are often surprising and poignant (not to mention occasionally funny and sexy). There were just moments when I wanted to say "No, don't do that thing you always do! Ride this one out a little longer. It was just starting to get good!" But books can't hear irritable men with colds. So instead it kept doing what it did.

And now that I think about it, I am not unlike one of Meloy's characters in that I wanted her delicate touch, but I also didn't want it. I wanted it both ways! What an amazing meta-fictional moment I've had on this depressing Saturday night!

I'm going to celebrate with some more Digestion tea.

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Sep 24, 2010 Eric Kibler rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is an excellent collection of short stories. I found them very accessible, and gobbled this book down in short order.

Meloy's milieu, like Raymond Carver's, is the American Northwest, although there are some detours into other locales. The stories run the gamut from funny to poignant to downright creepy in tone, but are always compelling.

A lot of the stories have an undercurrent or a hint (sometimes more than a hint) of the danger that women and girls face from unpredictable male figures. I...more

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Apr 10, 2010 Teresa rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love the title of this book, and it fits each and every story. (Though, I wish, perversely perhaps, the phrase hadn't been used in one of the later stories ("The Children") -- it was better, I think, to have the poem it's from used just as the epigraph.)

In each story, there is the surface story, and then there is at least one other layer that causes you to reflect after you've finished the story, causing you to wonder what might have been, if only this one thing had not happened or happened d...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Katherine Pearl rated it 4 of 5 stars

Utterly readable stories about people you could encounter just about anywhere, but with Meloy’s deft hand their everyday struggles become absorbing dramas. The complexities of adultery take center stage in many of the stories, including the one from which the title was drawn. My favorites were the more unexpected narratives. A cowboy, desperately alone and lonely, latches on to a newly-minted lawyer who has made a career mistake that could only seem logical in today’s economy. A bereft father tr...more

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Jan 10, 2010 Lynh rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 13, 2010 Katy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is my first short story collection in a while. I used to be crazy about short stories. When I started reading this I remembered why, then also immediately remembered why I stopped being so crazy about them -- I want more!!! It always feels like I'm gorging on desserts when I read a whole bunch of short stories at once. Even though these are beautifully written, I felt like I wanted to stop and keep going at the same time and that kind of cognitive stuff bugs me.

That said, "The Children" had...more

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About Maile Meloy

Maile Meloy was born in Helena, Montana, in 1972. A Family Daughter is her third book. Her short stories have been published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review. Her first story collection, Half in Love, received the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters , the John C. Zacharis Award from Ploughshares, and the PEN/Malamud Award. Her first novel, Liars and Saint...more

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“She craved a family, not having had enough of one to understand what a pain in the ass it was.” — 9 people liked it

“His heart felt dangerously full, for the first time in years. That dried-up battered organ, suddenly flush with love. It could kill him.” — 8 people liked it

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