A Way to Be Happy

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Short stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.

On New Years Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A middle-aged husband, bewildered by his failing marriage, redirects his anxiety toward a routine colonoscopy. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation. A Russian hitman suffering from a mysterious lung ailment retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In stories about disparate characters grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary, Caroline Addersons A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happinessand how we so often seem to understand it through our encounters with the lives, and the stories, of others.

Reviews

Praise for Caroline Adderson

All of Addersons characters are rounded and all have utility, not simply as plot devices but as part of a striving, suffering whole.
New York Times Book Review

Caroline Adderson treats the domestic drama with elegance and wit, and what she has to say about her characters and their circumstances is often profound.
Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion

A prose style as elegant and controlled as a swallow dive . . . No one could ever accuse Adderson of timidity when it comes to subject.
The Independent

Arresting . . . [Adderson] writes with a rare understanding of human frailty.
The Times (London)

Adderson excels at portraying life in all its glorious, devastating, unpredictable messiness.
Toronto Star

Adderson achieves a remarkable effect with her prose. Its clarity is so overwhelming that it becomes intoxicating.
Globe and Mail

Author Bio

Caroline Adderson is the author of five novels, two previous collections of short stories, as well as many books for young readers. Her award nominations include the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers Prizes, the Governor Generals Literary Award, the Rogers Trust Fiction Prize, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. The recipient of three BC Book Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, and the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement, Caroline lives and writes in Vancouver.