It Might Have Been What He Said: A Novel - Hardcover

Collinsworth, Eden

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559708123 ISBN 13: 9781559708128

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 2006

Synopsis

Marrying charming writer James in spite of his drinking and womanizing past, disturbed publishing executive Isabel confounds her concerned friends and family members with their unlikely mutual devotion, a situation that erupts when Isabel deteriorates into mental instability and attempts to murder her husband for a reason she cannot remember. 30,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

AUTHORBIO: Eden Collinsworth, a former president of Arbor House Book Publishing Co., founded Buzz magazine, serving as president and CEO. Now a vice president and director of cross media business development for Hearst Corporation, she sits on the board of directors for Literacy Partners. She lives in New York City.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* In an elegantly written, consistently surprising first novel, Collinsworth, the former publisher of Arbor House, pens a roman a clef set in the publishing world. Isabel Simpson, who was raised by nannies, survived her unhappy childhood by reading, which offered her the companionship lacking in her remote family. Mentored in the publishing business by legendary literary agent Monina Immordino (based on real-life legend Candida Donadio), Isabel begins a meteoric ascent that sees her becoming president of the company by 28. When she grows enamored of an unconventional piece of travel writing, she arranges to meet the author, although she is warned of his notoriously unreliable ways. Raffish James Willoughby, a product of a genteel southern family that has long since run out of money, is more interested in a free lunch than Isabel's book proposal, but when she excoriates him for his bad manners, the two are instantly drawn to each other, resulting in a volatile, whirlwind courtship and marriage. Collinsworth is a master of the tart putdown, near Austen-like in her keen analysis of the strange ways of the upper crust, and an ace tweaker of the conventions of the romance novel. This assured book works on so many levels--both as entertainment and as a moving, mordantly funny morality tale--that it's hard to believe it's a first novel. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1559708123
• ISBN 13: 9781559708128
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288