Melissa Malouf

"This novel is like a chess game, though we are not sure who the players are...and there is a sense of menace here, too. Oh yes. ...What is Alice getting herself into? Like me, you will have to read compulsively until you find out; and like me, you will find yourself admiring the elegant structure and complex originality of this stunning novel."
— Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls

More Than You Know is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press, Spring 2014. An excerpt from More Than You Know is available in New Writings from the Carolinas and the Landscape Beyond (2000).

Alice Clark has been trying to avoid an acute state of “not-knowing” about what’s happened and what’s happening. Whatever happened has much to do with why three of her friends died early and badly and she did not. Alice is a mess, and her story is a mess, too: digressive, disheveled, and wild. She takes us across the United States in an overdue effort to find out what part she’s played, or failed to, in her own life. Along the way, she revisits her memories and meets a variety of “Cheshire cats,” who, in scary, rude, and seductive ways, help her to keep going and find things out . . . or not.

"More Than You Know is a smart and wicked novel. Melissa Malouf blends the psychological intensity of Donna Tartt's The Secret History with the cultural melodies of Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad to produce her own dark and roving examination of American friendship. The prose is sublime. The characters will haunt your dreams. The story may never let you go."
— Alyson Hagy, author of Boleto and Ghosts of Wyoming

"With a sure, compassionate touch, Malouf takes a woman of sorrows on a journey of great wit, imagination and joy. This unpredictable road trip across America— and through Alice's painful past— is always insightful, and frequently hilarious."
— Emma Donoghue, author of Room