Book Review: A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson

Whenever a new adult book or story collection comes out by Caroline Adderson, I always jump at the chance to read it. A Way to be Happy is her latest release, and was longlisted for the Giller Prize earlier this year. Most of her books have come out quietly, and it continually astounds me how such a fantastic writer like Adderson can be unknown to so many Canadian readers, especially considering how impressive her biography reads; she’s been nominated for almost every literary prize out there, both locally and internationally. She excels at various forms of writing for both kids and adults, but her short stories are some of my favourites, so I was delighted to have this collection appear on my doorstep a few months ago.

Book Summary

At approximately 220 pages, there are only 8 stories in this collection, so we get a significant amount of time to meet and marinate in the characters’ lives. “All Our Auld Acquaintances Are Gone” follows a couple as they flit between New Years parties in apartment buildings, stealing purses and jackets from the mass of coats that are inevitably thrown into bedrooms for safekeeping. “The Procedure” is a story of a middle-aged man who frets about an upcoming medical procedure that he treats as a life-altering event. “Homing” is the story of a woman who temporarily relocates to a rental house that turns out to be a special stop for particular pet pigeons. “Started Early, Took My Dog” is the tale of a lesbian couple living on Vancouver Island, tormented by a man in a red truck who seems intent on lurking on the peripheries of their life. “Charity” is one of my favourites; it details the struggles of a young man who is desperate to understand the coldness of his mother, ends up on the streets, but then rescued by a silly misunderstanding he made as a young child. “From the Archives of the Hospital For the Insane” is one of the longer stories, written about a psychiatric sanitorium in the early 1900s and some of the patients that were admitted there. As you can tell, Adderson uses an impressively wide range of voices and situations in this collection.

My Thoughts

Believable characters and voices is a way I often judge a book’s writing, and Adderson excels at this. “Started Early, Took My Dog” is in intriguing story; it blurs into a work of suspense and the twist at the end is incredibly unexpected, but leaves the reader on a cliffhanger too. Being a female who lives in Vancouver herself, it likely wasn’t a stretch for Adderson to put herself in those characters shoes, so perhaps it’s not as indicative of her skills. However, “The Procedure” definitely does; it’s written from the perspective of an emotionally closed-off middle-aged man, and his inner thoughts and beliefs about his wife of many years seemed to imply that they had grown apart, or that he didn’t understand her at all. I suspect these reflections are something many men feel but are not willing to admit, and I found it incredibly perceptive that Adderson was able to tap into this male psyche in this way (of course keeping in mind that I’m also a woman, so I could be way off here, but it would be interesting to see what a man thought of this story).

“Charity” is another story that I found impressive for its character development. We follow the main character Robbie from a young boy through to his early twenties as he struggles with maturing into a young man under the critical, hawkish gaze of his mother. He’s overweight, bullied regularly and suffers from regular cold sores that erupt around his mouth so his self-esteem is low to begin with. To cope, he smokes copious amounts of weed, but has managed to hide this until his mother eventually kicks him out of the house. He has a girlfriend for a short period of time and they are deeply in love, but he makes a mistake (a somewhat funny one) and she immediately breaks up with him. Robbie continues heartbroken, in search of a family member who at the very least understands him. He doesn’t find this family member unfortunately, but there is hope. The way this 28-page story unfolds continually surprised me, but the depiction of this young man and his challenges felt so genuine to me, it elicited a true feeling of sympathy as I followed him through his young life.

Short stories can be difficult to sell to people, but I’ll always recommend an simple, well-written collection like this one. Adderson has much to offer readers here in Canada and abroad, and I encourage everyone to check out her impressive body of work.