The Canadian novelist Caroline Adderson’s latest collection of short stories 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. For this collection, she has rightly earned a place in the longlist of this year’s Giller Prize. In the first story titled All Our Auld Acquaintances Are Gone, Adderson wonderfully describes—very much like a screenwriter—a grief-laced Christmas.
Its principal protagonists—vagabonds and addicts Cory and Taryn—gatecrash a party to siphon off the invitees’ wallets. But this is only the premise, the delight is in the details and how Adderson manoeuvres the narrative arc to amplify the Kayla-shaped void in the duo’s life. The Procedure too has a subliminal undertone of grief, but the anxiety one faces when one hasn’t fully reconciled with their mortality is the source of its narrative tension.
When the fear of losing your life gnaws at you, what sort of insecurities overwhelm you? The question present themselves through the lead character Ketman’s behaviour. The unruly marital, parental and familial relationships further heighten the drama. What’s more appealing is that Adderson effectively employs people from a myriad of cultures in her stories—Indians, Jews, Russians, etc.
Moreover, gender and sexuality play a crucial role in multiple stories. For example, Ketman’s sister-in-law Sunita calls out th.