A Way to Be Happy
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Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize • A Globe 100 Best Book of 2024 • A CBC Best Fiction Book of the Year
Short stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.
On New Year’s Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation, and a Russian hitman, suffering from a mysterious lung ailment, retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In the nineteenth century, a disparate group of women coalesce in the attempt to aid a young girl in her escape from a hospital for the insane. These are but some of the remarkable characters who populate these stories, all of them grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary. Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happiness—and how often it comes through the grace of others.
Caroline Adderson
CAROLINE ADDERSON is the author of four novels (A History of Forgetting, Sitting Practice, The Sky Is Falling, Ellen in Pieces) and two collections of short stories (Bad Imaginings, Pleased to Meet You), as well as many books for young readers. Published in eleven countries, her work has received numerous award nominations, including for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Winner of three BC Book Prizes and three CBC Literary Prizes, Caroline was also the recipient of the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement. She is the program director of the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
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