“Todd Robert Petersen is crazy-talented, and the wild, weird, hilarious stories of It Needs to Look Like We Tried are just what’s called for in these bizarre, frightening times.”
— Richard Russo, Author of Empire Falls and Trajectory
Everyone has a dream, an idea, a goal. But what happens when those desires are thwarted, when dreams and goals fall apart? In It Needs to Look Like We Tried, Todd Robert Petersen explores the ways in which our failures work on the lives of others, weaving an intricate web of interconnected stories.
A fastidious man takes a detour on the way to his father’s wedding and kicks off a series of events that ricochets from the bride to her real estate clients; to a crazed former homeowner and his sister-in-law’s reality TV lover; to a hoarding family whose lives are wrecked by their appearance on the second-rate show. Their daughter decides to escape the gravity of her tiny town with the help of her boyfriend who has a not-quite-legal plan to scrape together enough money to fund their departure.
On their way across the country, these star-crossed lovers encounter our fastidious man, and the Rube-Goldberg machine of life continues. Their fling has petered out, and they are driving home, whatever home is left after walking away from everything they abandoned a month before.
Ask for it at your local bookstore or try Bookshop.org.
REVIEWS FOR IT NEEDS TO LOOK LIKE WE TRIED
Kirkus Reviews
“A disjointed Pulp Fiction-style narrative, hopscotching west of the Mississippi with a motley set of characters . . . The penultimate story, ‘Providence,’ is a gem…An engaging set of stories of broken lives, jagged in structure but smooth in the telling.” [Full Article]
Publishers Weekly
“Petersen’s stories sing with wise-cracking (a drug dealer on his business arrangements: “It’s an LLC, man. Corporations are people”), irresistible characters who make the best of a world filled with corruption and deception.” [Full Article]
Columbia Daily Tribune
“Todd Robert Petersen . . . leavens his fiction with personalities and peculiarities that, as a native Southwesterner, feel like home. His latest novel, It Needs to Look Like We Tried, fuses two great markers of the Southwest: quietly desperate lives and long stretches of open road. Just a few chapters in, it already has scratched the itch left by the books of Willy Vlautin and Barry Hannah. And just enough strangeness lingers to help fill the void of “Twin Peaks,” which I finished for the first time this spring.” [Full Article]
Fathom Magazine
Recent years have given rise to names like the Kardashians, Robertsons, and Gaineses simply by inviting viewers into their lives. And for better or worse, they’ve shaped our expectations for things like beauty, family, and the décor of our homes. That’s true for many of the characters in It Needs to Look Like We Tried as well, which Petersen explores from the vantage of media consumers, producers, and subjects.
His treatment of these themes makes the book a timely read, especially with a man made famous by reality TV now at the helm of our country. If we can trust the headlines, or at least our timelines, many feel as though the world is spinning beyond their grasp. And the easy response is to retreat into a cocoon of self-preservation. But true autonomy is a myth. Our choices always have effects. Just as smoking cigarettes influences healthcare costs so gentrifying neighborhoods taxes out the poor. The logic behind “Do what you want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone” ultimately discourages empathy. It’s first about what I want before it matters how it affects others. [Full Article]
Flagstaff Live!
“It Needs to Look Like We Tried combines the six degrees of separation theory with the butterfly effect, in which even the smallest of actions can have monumental consequences later down the road.…While the themes of the stories may be dark—parental death, infidelity, mental illness—all of this could have been overly melodramatic if not for Petersen’s light touch. The author is not concerned with focusing on the dour. What interests him instead is his characters’ emotional reactions when the world drops them into situations that are beyond their control. They are caught in storms created by other people who are, in turn, reacting to someone else’s storm.” [Full Article]