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"  If life is all about choices, as the saying goes, then what happens when we \u00ADsimply can&amp;#039;t make up our minds about what&amp;#039;s most important? In her second volume of short stories, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It (Riverhead), acclaimed \u00ADnovelist Maile Meloy (Liars and Saints, A Family Daughter), who first stunned critics in 2002 with her debut story collection, Half in Love, cracks at our nagging desire to have it all (the answers, the romance, the payout, and, in one case, the late grandmother come back to life) in 11 tightly written, \u00ADremarkably fluid narratives, most of which \u00ADunfold in sleepy towns across Meloy&amp;#039;s native Montana.  As Meloy&amp;#039;s characters tend to discover, there&amp;#039;s a catch to having everything both ways. In &amp;quot;The Girlfriend,&amp;quot; Leo, in order to \u00ADdis\u00ADcover the truth behind his daughter&amp;#039;s mysterious disappearance, must learn that his call to the cops changed the course of her fate; in &amp;quot;Two-Step,&amp;quot; Alice comforts a friend who is weathering marital \u00ADdifficulties, even though Alice is the proximate cause of the \u00ADtrouble; and in &amp;quot;Liliana,&amp;quot; a recently laid-off family man hopes against hope that his distant (but extremely wealthy) grandmother, whom he had thought was dead, will reconsider him in her will when she makes an appearance at his home. Throughout these emotional tugs-of-war decorated with precise details (the Mountain Fresh \u00ADdetergent that scented the pillowcase, the Springsteen song that was playing), Meloy doesn&amp;#039;t always deliver an intense aha! moment or let us in on exactly what their significance is. The truth is that, as their turmoil dies away, it&amp;#039;s up to us to decide. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/reviews/a10200/rocky-roads-330368/?src=global_footer>