It Might Have Been What He Said
Eden Collingsworth

Reviewed by Michelle Boucher-Ladd
 
It Might Have Been What He Said is the debut novel for Eden Collingsworth who is no stranger to the publishing world. Like the heroine of her novel, Collingsworth is a former president of a publish company and an active member of a rapidly changing literary scene. It Might Have Been What He Said is a tribute to the publishing world with its strong female lead, Isabel, who is as refreshingly feminine as she is commanding.
    
The novel begins in a psychiatrist’'s office where Isabel struggles to remember what caused her to try and kill her husband. From there the novel analyses the dissolving of a marriage, the moments that unfold a love affair and define the beginning, middle, and end, and how the characters arrive there.
    
It is a book of uncanny opposites. Isabel is a publisher and James is a writer. Fact and Fiction is how their son Burgo describes them. Isabel is shrewd while James is carefree; they both have remarkable taste and a quick wit. James is from a long line of aristocratic Virginia landowners who were all well educated, married strategically, but are now penniless after decades of frivolous spending. Isabel is from an extremely different background comprised of self-made-men, mobsters, vague ethnicities, and mental illness. She has earned her place in the publishing world while James gets by on his charm and raw talent. They are both beautiful and compliment each other completely. They make many compromises throughout their marriage as they move about from New York to LA to New York to Paris and back to New York again in an effort to resolve their emotionally static psyches. In the end it is not the fact that they have changed that ends their marriage but rather how they cannot change.
    
It Might Have Been What He Said is exquisitely written with a plot that twists in ways that are witty as well as innovative. It’s as literal as it is literary and has the reader reflecting on its subtle implications and word use. Toward the end of the novel Isabel writes:
   “The part of you that I still hold dear is the part with which
   I write
        Dear James . . .”

The bravado with which such words are written makes this novel unique when compared with other books on the market currently. It is not an especially nice story but it is an especially American one. It Might Have Been What He Said is a novel lover's novel.