Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize • A Globe 100 Best Book of 2024 • A CBC Best Fiction Book of the Year

Short stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.

On New Year’s Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation, and a Russian hitman, suffering from a mysterious lung ailment, retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In the nineteenth century, a disparate group of women coalesce in the attempt to aid a young girl in her escape from a hospital for the insane. These are but some of the remarkable characters who populate these stories, all of them grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary. Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happiness—and how often it comes through the grace of others.

Caroline Adderson is the author of Very Serious Children (Scholastic 2007), a novel for middle readers about two brothers, the sons of clowns, who run away from the circus. I, Bruno (Orca 2007) and Bruno for Real are collections of stories for emergent readers featuring seven year-old Bruno and his true life adventures.
Caroline Adderson also writes for adults and has won two Ethel Wilson Fiction Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, as well as the 2006 Marion Engel Award given annually to an outstanding female writer in mid-career. Her numerous nominations include the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist, the Governor General's Literary Award, the Rogers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Most recently, Caroline was the Vancouver Public Library's 2008 Writer-in-Residence.
Her eight year-old son Patrick and his many friends inspire her children's writing. Caroline and her family live in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Caroline Adderson's profile page

• Long-listed, Giller Prize

Praise for A Way to Be Happy

"When collected, the stories in A Way to Be Happy offer a multifaceted, even prismatic investigation into the influence of gender on perception, particularly in moments of fear and loneliness."

—Emily M. Keeler, Globe and Mail

"Adderson . . . is a deft, masterful storyteller whose literary fiction surely deserves more attention."

—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"One of Canada’s finest short-story writers considers what it means to find happiness. The characters veer from thieving addicts to a Russian hitman, and offer a multifaceted investigation into the influence of gender on perception, particularly in moments of fear and loneliness."

—Globe and Mail, The Globe 100

"Though her writing is incisive, emotionally astute, slyly funny and award-winning, it still feels like Adderson hasn’t quite gotten her due as one of this country’s best short-story writers."

—Emily Donaldson, Globe and Mail

"Many characters wave to others, only to have their heartfelt waves go coldly unacknowledged. Combined with tight, poignant descriptions . . . such moments convey the inner turmoil, emotional loneliness, and absorbing humanity that animate A Way to Be Happy as a whole."

—Kyle Wyatt, Literary Review of Canada

"When seeking happiness, there is always a cost. The journey is never simplistic, and when it comes to complexity, Adderson is a master."

—Winnipeg Free Press

"It’s difficult to make happiness interesting. Caroline Adderson, however, succeeds with stylish skill. She creates sympathetic characters struggling with inner complexities—what it feels like to be a disappointment, or to not be believed, or to lead a passionless life; always offering, though, an encounter providing a respite from loneliness or isolation."

—Kassie Rose, The Longest Chapter

"For each story, Adderson expertly develops a detailed setting . . . [and] the author carefully constructs vivid characters from every walk of life. Each one of them making their way to some undetermined fate."

—Bill Paul, The BC Review

"Caroline Adderson's stories are delicious: they zip and bubble, and a number are touched with tenderness."

—Townsend Walker, New York Journal of Books

"A Way To Be Happy is deeply contradictory in the best possible way, insisting at every turn that regardless of its title, there is, luckily, no such thing as a singular way to be happy."

—Catherine Marcotte, The Miramichi Reader

"As the author of many books of fiction and non-fiction, the breadth of Adderson’s writing experience is evident in her craft. This clever and meticulously crafted collection from a writer who has mastered her art is a pleasure to read."

—Lori Hahnel, FreeFall Magazine

"A Way to Be Happy is immensely refreshing, as it not only explores the uniqueness but also showcases the unpredictability of the everyday in a manner only a few writers manage to do."

—Saurabh Sharma, The New Indian Express

"Adderson’s prose is straightforward but doesn’t flatline; every word choice feels intentional. When she goes into detail, it is perfectly placed to highlight her characters’ idiosyncrasies, making the reader empathize with their struggles."

—Isobel Bray, The Tribune

"This well-seasoned author has managed to steer clear of the hazards of kitsch or gratuitousness to produce a near-perfect collection about a bunch of very imperfect yet entirely plausible characters and scenarios."

—Scout Magazine

"The characters in these stories from veteran of the form Caroline Adderson range from thieving addicts to a Russian hit man to a middle-aged man facing a routine colonoscopy. Through these varied characters and their disparate conflicts, Adderson explores happiness—how we find it and what it means when we do."

—Quill & Quire

"A superb and unique collection. Intricate, compassionate, complex, its every sentence carefully built, tested, and polished, each story draws the reader into the life of a character hurtling or meandering towards the consequences of their own choices and to the story’s necessary conclusion. They will by turn flood you with unexpected sympathy, lighten your mood, or leave you with a puzzle you can’t quite solve. No one else writes short fiction the way Caroline Adderson does, and there are only eight stories in the book. The way to be happiest is to savour each one."

—Kathy Page, Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize-winning author of Dear Evelyn

"Caroline Adderson's voice is as vivid as ever in this exciting new collection, and her characters are unfailingly mesmerizing—distinctive, unpredictable, somehow like everyone yet no one you've ever met before."

—Lynn Coady, author of Watching You Without Me

"Caroline Adderson builds terrific suspense from her characters’ lonely, off-centre lives. Each story in A Way to Be Happy is its own mysterious world, shaped by her outstanding powers of imagination and sympathy."

—Elizabeth Hay, author of Snow Road Station

"Caroline Adderson is one of Canada's best short story writers. A brilliant stylist, her inventive sentences are the trademark of a literary pro."

—Susan Swan, author of the upcoming memoir Big Girls Don’t Cry

Praise for Caroline Adderson

“All of Adderson’s characters are rounded and all have utility, not simply as plot devices but as part of a striving, suffering whole.”

—New York Times Book Review

“Caroline Adderson treats the domestic drama with elegance and wit, and what she has to say about her characters and their circumstances is often profound.”

—Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion

“Adderson excels at portraying life in all its glorious, devastating, unpredictable messiness.”

—Toronto Star

“Adderson achieves a remarkable effect with her prose. Its clarity is so overwhelming that it becomes intoxicating.”

—Globe and Mail

“A prose style as elegant and controlled as a swallow dive . . . No one could ever accuse Adderson of timidity when it comes to subject.”

—The Independent

“Arresting . . . [Adderson] writes with a rare understanding of human frailty.”

—The Times (London)