THIS IS HAPPY
In this profoundly moving memoir, Camilla Gibb, the award-winning, bestselling author of Sweetness in the Belly and The Beauty of Humanity Movement, reveals the intensity of the grief that besieged her as the happiness of a longed-for family shattered. Grief that lived in a potent mix with the solace that arose from the creation of another, most unexpected family: one composed of a small cast of resilient souls, adults broken in the way many of us are, united in love for a child. Reflecting on tangled moments of past sadness and joy, alienation and belonging, Gibb revisits her stories now in relation to the happy daughter who will inherit them, and she finds there new meaning and beauty.
Raw and unflinching, intelligent and humane, This Is Happy asks the big questions and finds answers in the tender moments of the everyday.
—Doubleday Canada, publishers of This Is Happy
This Is Happy was shortlisted for the 2016 RBC Taylor Prize and was selected as a best book of 2015 by the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the CBC, Quill and Quire and the Vancouver Sun.
Audiobook excerpt from This Is Happy
REVIEWS
"…one of the most exquisite, agonizing and, above all, uplifting books of the year."—Globe and Mail
"Raw...intelligent and insightful...a moving testament to resilience..." —Maclean's Magazine
"Her story is touching, human, alive. . . . It is beautifully written, brave and sincere." —Vancouver Sun
"This Is Happy is a powerful testament to what people can overcome and permission for what people can't." —Toronto Star
"This Is Happy has a rawness and power that's hard to resist. . . . a gifted writer." —NOW Magazine
"An array of life experiences both marvellous and painful in quiet language that often belies their extraordinariness…This Is Happy is a tiny green shoot peeking through a crack in heavy concrete, wily and survivalist, but tenuous too." —Globe and Mail