Happiness Forever: A Novel
Adelaide Faith
May 2025 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Ebook
256
Pages
family_home
Eligible
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About this ebook
“With tenderness, wit, and disarming honesty, Happiness Forever is . . . well, I don’t know exactly. A love story? A journey of self discovery? A strange slice of life? It’s all of the above, and more. Adelaide’s book is the kind you can read in a day but sticks with you forever.” —Madeline Cash, author of Lost Lambs
A complete refreshment and uplift of energy: a hilarious, beguiling first novel for the head and the heart.
Sylvie is happy only when she’s 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: the false hope promised by eighties music; what a dog’s inner life is really like; and how sad she, Sylvie is, outside that room. She’s aware she has an obsession, but whether it’s some flavor of erotic transference or a lost person’s need to connect, Sylvie isn’t sure.
Outside therapy Sylvie has what she considers to be a small life: a job as a veterinary nurse, companionship from her tattoo artist friend via text, and seaside walks with her brain-damaged dog, Curtains. But maybe therapy is making a difference, inviting her to imagine possibilities—possibilities that include a new friend she meets on the beach.
When the therapist starts to prepare Sylvie for the terrible fact that all treatment has to come to an end, Sylvie can’t stop herself from imagining sleeping in her car parked outside the therapist’s house. That won’t work. She has to be brave. Be brave, Sylvie! We love you.
In this wonderful, hilarious, stunning debut, Adelaide Faith captures the vulnerability, difficulty, and joy of personhood, of being a person, of being alive.
A complete refreshment and uplift of energy: a hilarious, beguiling first novel for the head and the heart.
Sylvie is happy only when she’s 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: the false hope promised by eighties music; what a dog’s inner life is really like; and how sad she, Sylvie is, outside that room. She’s aware she has an obsession, but whether it’s some flavor of erotic transference or a lost person’s need to connect, Sylvie isn’t sure.
Outside therapy Sylvie has what she considers to be a small life: a job as a veterinary nurse, companionship from her tattoo artist friend via text, and seaside walks with her brain-damaged dog, Curtains. But maybe therapy is making a difference, inviting her to imagine possibilities—possibilities that include a new friend she meets on the beach.
When the therapist starts to prepare Sylvie for the terrible fact that all treatment has to come to an end, Sylvie can’t stop herself from imagining sleeping in her car parked outside the therapist’s house. That won’t work. She has to be brave. Be brave, Sylvie! We love you.
In this wonderful, hilarious, stunning debut, Adelaide Faith captures the vulnerability, difficulty, and joy of personhood, of being a person, of being alive.
“With tenderness, wit, and disarming honesty, Happiness Forever is . . . well, I don’t know exactly. A love story? A journey of self discovery? A strange slice of life? It’s all of the above, and more. Adelaide’s book is the kind you can read in a day but sticks with you forever.” —Madeline Cash,...
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About the author
Adelaide Faith worked as an editor at Channel 4 Learning before training to be a veterinary nurse at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, after which she worked as a nurse at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals. Her short fiction has appeared in Forever Magazine, Hobart, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Maudlin House, Farewell Transmission, ExPat Press, and Vlad Mag. She is a member of Chelsea Hodson’s Morning Writing Club, and she lives in Hastings, England, with her daughter and dogs.
Adelaide Faith worked as an editor at Channel 4 Learning before training to be a veterinary nurse at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, after which she worked as a nurse at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals. Her short fiction has ap...
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