Book Club's selection for May 2016, This is Happy was a quick read. I loved that it is based in Toronto, with lots of local landmarks mentioned. That's where the love started and abruptly stopped for me.
Here's a summary thanks to GoodReads.com:
I am sympathetic to the struggles that the author faces. Depression and the struggle to find connection are fundamental challenges to many people. An introspective look at someone's experience can be helpful to others searching for solace. I commend the author for taking on this project and trying to shed light on the quest for happiness in a everyday life. It must have been a very challenging task given the author's ongoing struggle with depression.
That being said, I was left feeling that there were enormous gaps in the narrative that undermined the success of this work. The author neglected to examine of the most interesting elements of her life: her career as an author, an accomplished academic, her work as an instructor. She is a successful and published author after all, writing about her life and struggles. Amazing to find an author owning her own home in Toronto...Where many traditionally employed people only dream of this achievement. And yet, she fails to write about her life as an author and how she is challenged by her choice of work. In fairness, she references book tours and teaching the odd time, but she never further delivers any details on her occupation. Meetings with editors, working scripts, workshopping her writing...None of her daily experiences of being a writer make the pages of her memoire. The fact that she is a single parent, and able to buy a house in Toronto on her salary as a writer is daunting. This in itself is worthy of some exploration. But not in this book.
She also seems to lack introspection on certain events. How can your partner of ten years, just up and leave without any signs or signals? She doesn't offer any hint on this. Also, she barely touches on her relationship with her mother, but choses to obsess about her abusive father who left them when they were very young. Almost absent, the role her mother played is not explored. Maybe Gibb isn't ready or willing to share this aspect of her life.
Emily Donaldson of the Toronto Star.
Happiness is a choice. It's not something that is done to you. She seems to have missed the fact that she is constantly looking externally to find happiness--as though surrounding herself with random people will keep her emotionally buoyed. I also felt that Gibb looks at her daughter as the one person in her life who attracts others into her company. She is hesitant to claim any possible draw on people herself. I wonder if this is a symptom of her current medical condition.
About 97% of this memoire is the author seeing only the negative in her life. She dwells on the abusiveness of her father, and plays the victim in many of her life's experiences. When you step back from the narrative, you see a person who has been blessed in so many ways. Gibb enjoys health, is incredibly well educated (Oxford), is very well traveled, is financially solid (owns a house in Toronto), affords a live-in nanny, and continues to enjoy the love and companionship of her family and friends. She has a beautiful daughter. The most significant take away from this memoire is that clinical depression has robbed her of the enjoyment of these incredible gifts.
So sad with little redemption. I would pass on this one if I had a choice.
Here's a summary thanks to GoodReads.com:
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 with the creation of another, most unexpected family. A family constituted by 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.
I am sympathetic to the struggles that the author faces. Depression and the struggle to find connection are fundamental challenges to many people. An introspective look at someone's experience can be helpful to others searching for solace. I commend the author for taking on this project and trying to shed light on the quest for happiness in a everyday life. It must have been a very challenging task given the author's ongoing struggle with depression.That being said, I was left feeling that there were enormous gaps in the narrative that undermined the success of this work. The author neglected to examine of the most interesting elements of her life: her career as an author, an accomplished academic, her work as an instructor. She is a successful and published author after all, writing about her life and struggles. Amazing to find an author owning her own home in Toronto...Where many traditionally employed people only dream of this achievement. And yet, she fails to write about her life as an author and how she is challenged by her choice of work. In fairness, she references book tours and teaching the odd time, but she never further delivers any details on her occupation. Meetings with editors, working scripts, workshopping her writing...None of her daily experiences of being a writer make the pages of her memoire. The fact that she is a single parent, and able to buy a house in Toronto on her salary as a writer is daunting. This in itself is worthy of some exploration. But not in this book.
She also seems to lack introspection on certain events. How can your partner of ten years, just up and leave without any signs or signals? She doesn't offer any hint on this. Also, she barely touches on her relationship with her mother, but choses to obsess about her abusive father who left them when they were very young. Almost absent, the role her mother played is not explored. Maybe Gibb isn't ready or willing to share this aspect of her life.
Emily Donaldson of the Toronto Star.
Gibb’s writing is laser-like, spare — the latter achieved by omitting much of the detail typically found in memoirs (her daughter’s name, her source of income after the split). Though a memoir is necessarily one individual’s point of view, the spirit of this one is collectivist: Gibb is “saved” not by the flamboyant discovery of untapped inner reserves, but rather by the mentally salubrious effects of companionship.
Happiness is a choice. It's not something that is done to you. She seems to have missed the fact that she is constantly looking externally to find happiness--as though surrounding herself with random people will keep her emotionally buoyed. I also felt that Gibb looks at her daughter as the one person in her life who attracts others into her company. She is hesitant to claim any possible draw on people herself. I wonder if this is a symptom of her current medical condition.
About 97% of this memoire is the author seeing only the negative in her life. She dwells on the abusiveness of her father, and plays the victim in many of her life's experiences. When you step back from the narrative, you see a person who has been blessed in so many ways. Gibb enjoys health, is incredibly well educated (Oxford), is very well traveled, is financially solid (owns a house in Toronto), affords a live-in nanny, and continues to enjoy the love and companionship of her family and friends. She has a beautiful daughter. The most significant take away from this memoire is that clinical depression has robbed her of the enjoyment of these incredible gifts.
So sad with little redemption. I would pass on this one if I had a choice.
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