Making It Up

Making It Up is Lively’s engrossing and deftly constructed response. What if her family’s escape from Egypt during World War II had a different outcome? What would her life have been like if she’d become pregnant at eighteen? Or if she had married someone else?

As Lively weaves through very plausible hesitations, choices, and definitive moments of a life, she also offers a meditation on the nature of fate, destiny, and choice. An examination of those junctures when a split-second decision can change everything, Making It Up is a striking testament to Lively’s distinctive gifts and a rare opportunity to glimpse how real life can inspire great fiction.