So Happy It Hurts

(Paperback)

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A hilarious debut about being young and looking for meaning - for fans of Girls and Fleabag 'This lovely, quirky novel will appeal to fans of Miranda July and Sheila Heti' Red Ottila McGregor is thirty years old and has decided it's time to sort her life out. She's going to quit drinking, stop cheating and finally find true happiness. Easy, right Getting in the way of this plan are- 1. Grace, her best friend, who believes self-improvement is for people in their forties. 2. Mina, her sister, who is mentally ill, and it might be Ottila's fault. 3. Thales, the Greek guy who works in the hospital cafeteria - probably the best, most dangerous person Ottila's ever met. Told through a scrapbook of emails, receipts, therapy transcripts and other ephemera, this is an infectious one-off of a novel that makes you wince and laugh in equal measure.

Reviews

[A] raw, funny and untidily generous novel... Ottila belongs to the great sisterhood of the Female Fuck-Up. Not the eroticised trainwrecks male writers love to invent, but the real-deal ones like Phoebe Waller-Bridges Fleabag... As much as youre rooting for Ottila to get her man, thats not the point; the point is whether she can gain the moral wisdom to live a better kind of life. Shes an Emma steeped in ethanol. -- Sarah Ditum * Guardian *
This lovely, quirky novel will appeal to fans of Miranda July and Sheila Heti. -- Sarra Manning * Red *
I loved the novels strong sense of place and the picture it paints of a sparky, inner-city singleton trying to stay on the straight and narrow. Funny, bleak and heart-warming, sometimes all at the same time. -- Wendy Holden * Daily Mail *
Balances irony and earnestness perfectly, offering both a heartbreakingly sincere quest for happiness and an acerbic intolerance of hollow quick-fixes... Anneliese Mackintoshs latest work is positively radiant. * The Skinny *
Impressive and challenging This debut novel is every bit as assured, honest and innovative as its predecessor So Happy It Hurts is something of a high-wire act, laugh-out-loud funny at times but also so emotionally honest that it sometimes feels like a punch to the guts As sharp a novel about 21st-century living as youll find anywhere. * Big Issue *
A cleverly constructed story, full of trauma, playfulness and wisdom. When portraying fallible lives, Mackintoshs writing never flinches. * Jason Donald *
Searing Mackintosh manages to write a book that no one else could pull off with all the same weird panache, peeling back the surface of her main character to expose all the blood and guts and mess beneath. * Diva *

Author Bio

Anneliese Mackintosh's debut short story collection, Any Other Mouth, was published by Freight Books in 2014 and won the Green Carnation Prize. It was also shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize, Saltire Society's First Book Award and the Saboteur Award, and was longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Anneliese's short fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland, and published in magazines and anthologies including the Scotsman, Edinburgh Review, and the Best British Short Stories 2013.