The rom-com is made new again, fresh and sparkling, in Rebecca Fisseha’s ONLY BECAUSE IT’S YOU, a novel that takes the fake relationship/marriage trope and gives it real stakes, harnessed to actual situations that people live through all the time as relationships are complicated by factors like citizenship or visas. In ONLY BECAUSE IT’S YOU, the fake marriage is not just a lark, and Miz only agrees to it because she cares about her friend Kal so much, believes in his talents as an actor, and wants to help him have his big chance. Although being anchored in seriousness doesn’t mean the novel isn’t also a lot of fun.
In our conversation, Fisseha talks about how writing scripts was great practice for rom-com dialogue, how she started writing without knowing her story was a rom-com at all, about what she learned from Jesse Q. Sutanto’s DIAL A FOR AUNTIES about interiority, and also about how heavy topics can be handled and even illuminated with humour.
Sometimes you need to take a leap of faith to land exactly where you're meant to be…
Miz is not the marrying kind. She's more of the no-strings-attached kind. No labels, only fun. So, when she finds a diamond ring in her casual-but-very-hot hook-up's gym bag, she immediately ends things and runs.
Kal is one of Miz's best friends, an aspiring actor who moved to Toronto from Ethiopia and is on the brink of his big break. But when he's suddenly at risk of having to return home and leave Toronto forever, Miz panics. She can't imagine her life without Kal.
There's only one solution: Miz will marry Kal to become his spousal sponsor. He'll get to keep pursuing his acting career, and she'll get to keep her best friend in the city. It'll be a quick, short only-on-paper marriage between friends, followed by a quick, easy divorce. Nothing will change, and life will go back to normal. Right?
Rebecca Fisseha is an Ethiopian-Canadian writer based in Toronto. She is the author of the novel Daughters of Silence, as well as short stories, creative non-fiction, and personal essays that appear in various publications, including the anthology Addis Ababa Noir and Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language. Rebecca is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers, the Vancouver Film School, and an alumnus of the TIFF Writers' Studio.
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