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A complete refreshment and uplift of energy: a hilarious, beguiling first novel for the head and the heart.
"It's maybe six hundred times a day," Sylvie says, and then she stops and the therapist tilts her head. "That I think about you," Sylvie goes on, the word you said so quietly as to be barely audible.
Sylvie is happy only when she is in therapy. This is because Sylvie is in love with her therapist; she thinks about her every second they're not together (roughly 167 hours and 10 minutes per week). In that room, Sylvie is able to talk about everything. Her true pleasures, which include hitting a piñata so the candy falls out, and her thoughts about the false hope promised by eighties music, and what a dog's inner life is really like. She's aware she has an obsession, but whether it's a case of extreme transference, "erotic transference," or a lost person's need to connect, Sylvie isn't sure.
Beyond therapy, Sylvie has what she considers to be a small life: a job as a veterinary nurse, companionship from her tattooist friend via text, and her little brain-damaged dog, Curtains. One day, on the beach in her seaside town, she meets Chloe, who understands Sylvie completely. Chloe becomes her friend that day and for the rest of her life.
When the therapist delivers some devastating news, Sylvie has to imagine new and lasting ways of coping (that don't include being adopted by the therapist). Her world has begun to open up, inching beyond the pain, confusion, and fear that have confined her, and she must decide whether she's ready for a bravery of feeling.
With a lightness of touch, irresistible charm, and a rare, warm wit, Happiness Forever is one woman's search inside―and for―herself. In this stunning debut, Adelaide Faith encapsulates the great vulnerability, difficulty, and joy of being a person and of being alive.
"A strange and underdeveloped book." —Kirkus Reviews
"[W]itty...Readers will fall in love with this meditative and heartfelt novel." —Publishers Weekly
"Faith masterfully balances Sylvie's dialogue-heavy sessions with her counselor with unflinchingly honest descriptions of her inner thoughts and surroundings. Fans of Judith Rossner's August and Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (2017) will enjoy this slow-paced novel of one woman's journey to find happiness without asking for permission." —Booklist
"In Sylvie, Faith has created a wonderfully likable and empathetic character longing for connection to others and reckoning with the next level of emotional maturity...Faith presents interesting insights into the client-therapist relationship in this strong character-driven novel, featuring a realistic, even quirky portrayal of someone coming of age." —Library Journal
"I was mesmerized by Happiness Forever, and helplessly caught in its spell from the first page. There is so much rare humor and insight and sweetness and humanity in its pages, and a true and ringing voice. It's a beautiful book about longing, and the feeling that one is not a self, and being hurt, and the vulnerability of simply being alive, and friendship, and obsession, and therapy. I wanted to pass it on to all my friends." ―Sheila Heti, author of Alphabetical Diaries
"Happiness Forever explores what happens when we let ourselves be truly transformed by obsession and longing. Adelaide Faith's writing is unrestrained and voyeuristic, resulting in a truly special book. Not only is this novel surprising and funny, it's also poignant and philosophical in its exploration of what it means to watch and be watched. This is a book I won't soon forget." ―Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else
This information about Happiness Forever was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Adelaide Faith worked as an editor in the Schools Department of Channel 4 before training to be a veterinary nurse at Battersea Cats and Dogs Home, after which she worked as a nurse at the RSPCA and the PDSA. Her short fiction has appeared in Forever Magazine, Hobart, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Maudlin House, Farewell Transmission, ExPat Press, and Stone of Madness Press. She is a member of Chelsea Hodson's Morning Writing Club, and she lives in Hastings with her young daughter and old dog, Pierrot.
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