Porter Square Books is delighted to welcome local author Jana Casale for a virtual conversation with Julia Pierpont. The two will discuss How to Fall Out of Love Madly on Tuesday, November 15 at 8pm ET. This event has been rescheduled from August, when the book released- thank you for your patience!

Perceptive, mordantly funny, and full of heart, How to Fall Out of Love Madly examines women’s many relationships—with one another, their mothers, their work, men, and themselves—to reveal their underlying power and complexity. It asks, why do so many smart, compassionate, otherwise empowered women tolerate egregious behavior from the men they love? And what will it take for them to reclaim control? Drawing comparisons to Sally Rooney- and even the title "the American Sally Rooney" in a starred Kirkus review of this latest novel- Jana Casale is an author to look out for.

Joy and Annie are friends and roommates whose thirty-something lives aren’t exactly what they’d imagined. To make ends meet, they decide to rent their extra bedroom to Theo, who charms Joy with his salt-and-pepper hair and adoration of their one-eyed cat. When Annie goes to live with her boyfriend, Theo and Joy settle into a comfortable domesticity. Then Theo brings home Celine, the girlfriend he’s never mentioned, who is possibly the most stunning woman Joy has ever seen. Joy resolves to do whatever it takes to hold on to him, falling ever deeper into an emotional hellscape of her own making. She is too obsessed to realize that Celine’s beauty doesn’t protect her from pain. Haunted by an event from her past, Celine can’t escape her shame and finds herself in an endless cycle of self-sabotage.

Annie is baffled by Joy’s senseless devotion to Theo, but she’s consumed by her own obsessions: she can’t stop parsing her commitment-phobic boyfriend’s texts in an exhausting mission to maintain his approval. At work, where she fully embraces her natural assertiveness, Annie is a star. But when an anonymous letter lands on her desk accusing her esteemed and supportive boss of sexual misconduct, she is forced to decide who and what she’s willing to stand up for.

Perceptive, mordantly funny, and full of heart, How to Fall Out of Love Madly examines women’s many relationships—with one another, their mothers, their work, men, and themselves—to reveal their underlying power and complexity. It asks, why do so many smart, compassionate, otherwise empowered women tolerate egregious behavior from the men they love? And what will it take for them to reclaim control?

Jana Casale is the author of The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky. She has a BFA in fiction from Emerson College and an MSt in creative writing from Oxford. She currently resides outside Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.

Jana Casale with Julia Pierpont, How to Fall Out of Love Madly