Happiness Forever

‘I was mesmerised by Happiness Forever … there is so much rare humour and insight and sweetness and humanity in its pages’ SHEILA HETI

‘A disarmingly sweet book, with a protagonist who speaks to those parts of us we often pretend aren’t there’ NICOLA DINAN

A hilarious, beguiling and utterly original debut novel following a woman trying to make sense of her life and herself as she falls in love with her therapist.

Sylvie is only happy when she is at therapy. This is because Sylvie is in love with her therapist. She wants to kiss her and roll around on the floor with her. She thinks about her every second they’re not together (roughly 167 hours and 10 minutes per week). She’s aware she has an obsession, but whether it is – as her therapist suggests – a case of extreme ‘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, her little brain-damaged dog, Curtains, and a new friend Chloe who she met on the beach. 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 fear that has confined her until now, and she must decide whether she’s ready for a bravery of feeling.

In this stunning debut novel, Adelaide Faith encapsulates the great vulnerability, difficulty and joy of being alive.