It Might Have Been What He Said

by Eden Collinsworth

Book Overview

Isabel was able to remember the precise moment when she tried to kill her husband. Strangely enough, she couldn't recollect why. Thus begins the powerful tale of beautiful Isabel-a successful young... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1559708409
• ISBN13: 9781559708401
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Length: 279 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

This book stunned me

I read this book in one weekend - I could not put it down. There was something about her writing, about the character - it compelled me to keep reading. I thoroughly enjoyed this book while finding it to be one of the most depressing stories I had read in awhile. Maybe not depressing, just terribly sad. I actually cried when I finished reading this, and I am not a crier! Of course I was in a fragile jet-lagged state, but I felt like I was crying for her, for women who are wronged in relationships, for myself... I thought this was an amazing book.

Case study in female dementia

First let me say, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The chapters were short, quirky and entertaining... But what occurred to me while reading is the absurdity of a woman's rationalizing--making two-hundred-seventy-nine pages of excuses for what happened. Methinks trying to convince herself--See readers,I'm not an ass or fool or silly mark. Here's why--I a smart twenty-eight-year-old dynamo, was blindsided by a irresponsible user i.e. gigolo please understand...I'm so smart, so soignée so together and on and on ...ad nauseum More excuses: Her strange remote family.....James equally eccentric tired blue-blood one. You see I wasn't normal. Oh but in the essential ways. Isabel was the typical gigolo mark.. First lack.....Isabel was not a pretty woman, or a sexy woman..or one who would stop a man dead in his tracks (in a city where thousands are). Second deficit: Isabel was inexperienced, her whole charge tunneled myopically towards achieving career success. Why not? What had she to dissuade her? Scores of distracting men phoning, begging for her company? Hardly. Genus Plain Jane over-compensation careerist. Mantra; Okay so I'm not a man magnet--leastways I've got something going for me. I'm smart, I'm uber successful...I'm a hotshot publisher....but I'm lonely and dying for a good f....! A desperado on wheels. Then the predator in the name of James Willoughby appeared---.snobbish, tanked and on the make for the waitress---in short order Isabel jumped him...like a cat in heat. The gigolo looks for desperados with few options to have an exciting high-wattage love life.(Think spinster overachiever) save if they subsidize it. The gigolo smells desperation...and sizes it up...like the salesman he is...and in return for his elegant keep offers dynamite sex and courtly attention, scintillating company and the semblance of a family, which is exactly what Isabel, who has never experienced the attentions of a man in such an intense way wants. But it costs in self worth and hard cash. And as she goes down in her own estimation he preys upon her even more. You do not make lunch out of a strong savvy person or one who has woken up. The inane thing about this endless diatribe...is that Isabel never asks..the hard questions..to herself...i.e. what lacks were in her that drew her to such a damaged selfish man? From the beginning Isabel was the single mother...when Burgo was born..the only change was Isabel shouldered the responsibility for two children instead of one. She always knew she was being used...after twelve years...(how many kicks in the head does she need?? The sex must have been "hot".).if not..she needed more medication or perhaps a brain transplant. It's like former Beetle..Paul McCartney..saying ridiculous...my money was not a factor in my marriage to Heather. Who is he kidding?!!!It was a factor...but what McCartney hopes is there were other important factors,too. Like maybe love and caring. When you've done some

a truly original tale of ultimate undoing

In IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WHAT HE SAID, Eden Collinsworth has written an original story of misguided entitlement, inexplicable love and attempted murder. Twenty-eight-year-old Isabel Simpson heads a small but successful publishing house. Dedicated to her work to the point of consumption, Isabel's sole focus is the book, the turn of the phrase, the craft. Isabel's life outside the office is lacking, to say the least; she has had her share of lovers, her share of friends, and her share of travels, but real romance has eluded her and her past personal relationships have been uninteresting. Her familial history, however, is far from uninteresting and the revelations of her ancestry are strong contributing factors to what makes this story so compelling. Isabel's mother's upbringing is a mystery and her disappearance during Isabel's youth is an equal enigma. Slowly Collinsworth gives hints at what happened and keeps the pages turning as Isabel's involvement in her mother's disappearance comes to the foreground. The unraveling of the history parallels the unraveling of Isabel herself. And there is James Willoughby, a freelance writer with a "God-given talent (that) suggested more than it accomplished" and with blue blood lineage but an empty bank account and wallet. He's a rogue who drinks too much, spends too much, and sleeps around too much. When Isabel and James meet to discuss a potential book deal, sparks fly and an unlikely couple is born. Friends and family alike warn each against the other; Isabel's dearest friend John says to her, "I've logged in enough experience to be able to see trouble walking toward me. The last thing you do is cross the street to invite it to lunch." But Isabel replies, "Invite it to lunch." Isabel and James seem simpatico, in their love of each other and their love of writing. "Mind, sex, and --- most remarkable --- her heart were working as one and had miraculously found their correspondents in the same man," said Isabel. They marry, have a child together, and from all outward appearances seem to find ways of forging a union based on compromise and love; they move "with ease through their charmed existence." Until Isabel attempts to murder James. The very thing that brought them together would part them: "Words drew Isabel to James and, in time, to a place she couldn't have imagined. His words would hold her there, long after she should have left. They would provoke her blind rage...and become reason for Isabel to try killing him." IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WHAT HE SAID is a story of the crashing down of the psyche, of love, of marriage. There are shades of obsession, like in THE ENGLISH PATIENT, and reminiscences of excessive consumption, like in THE GREAT GATSBY. But in the end, this is a truly original tale of ultimate undoing. --- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara

Enjoy this book as a mystery/personal history/examination of a marriage, perhaps in a beach chair th

Eden Collinsworth's first novel is a work of fiction that undoubtedly has some basis in fact, since both author Collinsworth and main character Isabel are high-powered women in the New York publishing industry. Assuming Collinsworth never actually tried to kill her husband, that's where the similarities stop. The mystery opens with Isabel in her psychiatrist's office answering questions about what she was thinking when she tried to kill her husband of over a decade. Through a series of brief, essay-like chapters, Isabel explores her childhood with a cold, unreachable mother, her early career-climbing days, her introduction to an unlikely, reckless mate, their courtship, and the evolution of a marriage which eventually dissolved in alcoholism, adultery, and anger. Each chapter opens with a poignant sentence about the subject (character) at hand. The mystery at hand is why Isabel felt compelled to attack her husband, and the answer lies in Isabel's own closeted, tumultuous family history. It's a compelling personal journey, and the prose is articulate and elegant, but this falls short of being a pure five-star narrative. Several characters are underdeveloped, namely Isabel's brother Ian and her older-best-friend-token-gay-man John, who appears in the novel with no backstory and no evidence of why the pair are such fast friends. Collinsworth is compared to Edith Wharton on the back of the hardcover release, and the comparison makes perfect sense, because the author is trying just a bit too hard to achieve the sublime, understated brilliance of Wharton, and she misses the mark. Wharton is larger-than-life, however, and the majority of modern fiction does not compare to her catalogue. Enjoy this book as a mystery/personal history, perhaps in a beach chair this summer.

A very special, Dominick Dunne-like New York thriller

Isabel Simpson can't say she wasn't warned. John Vance, her close friend and very wise judge of character, told her: James Willoughby was trouble. Yes, James writes well --- Isabel can't stop reading his piece in the New York Times travel section. But John Vance is quite clear. James is "impossible to work with." He's from blue blood --- "tired blood." But Isabel is a publisher on the lookout for a writer with a unique voice. She calls James's agent to set up a lunch. And gets another warning: "Do you understand how impossible he is? I could barely find anyone to work with Willoughby and two thousand words. No one could survive him through the completion of a book." Despite all reasons not to do it, they meet at Orso --- because this is that kind of a New York book. That is, upper echelon. Powerful people. Insiders. But not, as in chick lit books, doing stupid things with brand names. These are serious people. Isabel, anyway. You don't get to be head of a publishing house --- even with a lot of luck --- at 28 without having a steely intelligence, a smart tongue and a ton of self-confidence. Like at The Lunch, for example. Isabel is way beyond witty. The dialogue is Edith Wharton on steroids: smart, fast-paced, dangerous. And mean. James is a callow user, a jerk on the make. And Isabel nails him. Crucifies him, in fact. It doesn't take long, just a few words, but they're the right ones. He's dead. She killed him. And then they get married. What? Yes. Married. By this time, Collinsworth has laid out James and Isabel's family histories and personal pathologies. And although you, the reader, are screaming at her not to do it, he won't change, he can't change, the romantic in you is saying, yes, go for it, maybe you'll shoot the moon. That question --- do we change when love strikes? --- is the engine of the book. It is the kind of question so first-rate it will survive second-rate characters and plotting. Happily, the characters are so wonderfully quirky they're far from second-rate; they're strange and creative and although they're not like anyone in your life, you care about them. About both of them. Until..... There is a murder attempt. I'm not spoiling the book to tell you. The book's opening line is: "Isabel couldn't remember why she tried to kill her husband....it might have been what he said." And that makes the book a thriller. A special kind of thriller. The kind Dominick Dunne writes. This is a debut novel? Ha. This is as good as books about New York careerists get. You're not standing outside, pressing your nose against the glass in this one --- you're in the room. And now you can't say you haven't been warned.