Happy Like This

A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree

A New York Times Editors’ Choice

Winner of the 2019 John Simmons (Iowa) Short Fiction Award

The characters in Happy Like This are smart girls and professional women—social scientists, linguists, speech therapists, plant physiologists, dancers—who search for happiness in roles and relationships that are often unscripted or unconventional. In the midst of their ambivalence about marriage, monogamy, and motherhood and their struggles to accept and love their bodies, they look to other women for solidarity, stability, and validation. Sometimes they find it; sometimes they don’t. Spanning a wide range of distinct perspectives, voices, styles, and settings, the ten shimmering stories in Happy Like This offer deeply felt, often humorous meditations on the complexity of choice and the ambiguity of happiness.

Praise for Happy Like This

“Wurzbacher…deploys her encyclopedic command of various ideas, regions, professions and lexicons with the authority of seasoned masters like Adam Johnson. This is a writer at the top of her game; but hopefully she’s only just getting started.” —The New York Times

“I love these dark, lyrical, sinewy stories about women’s relationships with their bodies and with each other. It’s the sort of theme that could feel irritably well-trod, but that’s not the case here at all; these stories surprised me at every turn. And the writing is so gorgeous!” —Carmen Maria Machado, judge, John Simmons Short Fiction Award

“I fell in love with these stories from page one. Happy Like This is a funny, touching catalog of women’s generosity toward each other and themselves, of the secrets we need to keep, and the paths we must take in order to live more fully. A powerhouse of a collection.” —Danielle Lazarin, author of Back Talk

“Happy Like This is an intelligent and moving glimpse into the lives of women searching for happiness. Each story pulses with electric writing, often humorous, but always full of authenticity and compassion. I can’t wait for people to read this book.” —Brandon Hobson, author of Where the Dead Sit Talking and The Removed

“What a gorgeous, varied, brilliant, and accomplished collection of stories. On every page, moments of truth and beauty so perfectly, easily, and indelibly rendered in lines to make you catch your breath and wish to read them over and over… I am so very, very happy that Happy Like This exists. A must read!” —Gregory Spatz, author of Inukshuk

“Wurzbacher’s incisive, polychromatic story collection centers on the dizzying complexities of female friendships: how they fray and mend over time and are often imbued with the intensity of love affairs.” —Oprah Magazine

“Wurzbacher dives into the lives of women in this brilliant collection, examining the ways they live and relate to each other while harboring their own secrets and feelings. Her lyrical prose and unflinchingly confrontational voice are powerful and captivating.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Full of the strange ordinariness of relating… vital and bewitching.” —Foreword Reviews (starred review)

“Happy Like This…is a solidly crafted, at times playful, exploration of separation, belonging, attachment, and resilience in women’s lives… What’s most impressive to me is the way Wurzbacher pulled together varied depictions of female loss and resilience into a cohesive, complex, and purposeful whole. This is a book I’ll read again.” —Waxwing Literary Journal

“Wurzbacher builds worlds within worlds, taking a nameless suburbia or an anonymous university campus and populating each with complex, connected characters, all curious about how they fit into the world around them. Perhaps the balance between these details and the universal questions in each of these stories is why the settings feel so expansive and the emotional journeys of these characters feel so true.” —Chicago Review of Books

“I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a series of short stories this much. Each entry has its own charm and individuality. That’s one of the most impressive aspects here—how such a broad emotional pallet could unite under this rubric of the need of directions, of answers in a universe that is a cruel combination of callous and mysterious. A choice, rewarding collection.” —Basso Profundo

“The stories in Ashley Wurzbacher’s debut collection do the brave work of building upon established traditions to create worlds and languages all their own. The result is a sweeping, insightful, and compassionate portrait not only of women’s lives, losses, and loves, but of their anger, its power, and the fierce sisterhood forged between those who express it.” —Allie Rowbottom, author of JELL-O Girls

“Rumor has it that Alice Munro in responding to the question ‘Do you consider yourself a feminist?’, replied thusly: ‘If you mean do I take the lives of women seriously, yes.’ Ashley Wurzbacher’s wonderful collection of stories made me think of that writer, and that answer, repeatedly. I love this book.” —Antonya Nelson, author of Funny Once