The Sad Truth About Happiness
A Novel
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
A beautiful and affecting novel -- bittersweet and comic -- on the elusive nature of happiness
Maggie is in her early thirties, gainfully employed, between relationships, and ready for a change. But when she takes a quiz in a magazine that promises to predict the date of a person's death, she's shocked to learn she's going to die before her next birthday unless she can somehow discover contentment in life. What ensues is a quirky and satisfying journey in pursuit of true happiness, a quest that leads to unexpected joys and perceptions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This charming though overwritten debut from novelist Carol Shields's eldest daughter hinges on the sympathetic protagonist's realization that she is "not completely" happy, an insight that surprises her when a magazine quiz devised to predict longevity calculates that she has but three months to live. Thirty-something Maggie Selgrin, an unmarried radiation technologist in a Vancouver hospital, has always been the even-tempered middle daughter in a remarkably wholesome family. Despite her professional stability, solid friendships and close family, the quiz triggers her admission of discontent. Not only does she ache for romance (she links joy with the idea of a relationship), but she realizes she has always subsumed her needs to those of her more temperamental sisters. Maggie flounders and fumbles to regain her emotional footing before no less than three men enliven her static existence and she becomes embroiled in the kidnapping of her sister Lucy's baby. Giardini's meditative, hyper-descriptive prose can bog down the plot, but readers will surely relate to her likable heroine. And if the story offers no novel lessons about life, love or the pursuit of happiness ("Happiness evades capture, dissolving like a melody into the air, eluding even the most delicate, careful grasp"), it does provide a pleasantly entertaining journey.
