This Is Happy, Camilla Gibb
This Is Happy, Camilla Gibb
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This Is Happy

Author: Camilla Gibb

Narrator: Camilla Gibb

Unabridged: 6 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Anchor Canada

Published: 03/23/2021

Synopsis

'"All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them,' Isak Dinesen once said. Sorrows are all pain otherwise, pain without sense or meaning. But joys, too, it seems to me, need their context. And sometimes their coexistence needs to be borne. The coexistence or possibility of the opposite can be what gives an experience its meaning. At its simplest, that is a story." —Camilla Gibb, 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 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.

About The Author

CAMILLA GIBB was born in London, England, and grew up in Toronto. She is the author of five internationally acclaimed novels—Mouthing the Words, The Petty Details of So-and-so's Life, Sweetness in the Belly, The Beauty of Humanity Movement and The Relatives—as well as the bestselling memoir This Is Happy. Camilla has been the recipient of the Trillium Book Award, the City of Toronto Book Award and the CBC Canadian Literary Award and has been shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the RBC Taylor Prize. She has a Ph.D. from Oxford University and is an adjunct faculty member of the graduate creative writing programs at the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph. Visit her at camillagibb.com

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jessica on December 03, 2015

Review originally appeared here: [URL not allowed] I read the first pages of This Is Happy, Camilla Gibb’s first memoir, on the edge of Guelph Lake with a folk festival buzzing behind me. It was the final weekend of July, and I’d snuck away from the chaos: The sweaty bodies fig......more

Goodreads review by Krista on January 21, 2016

We are the storytelling animal; our stories are what make us human. I didn't know what to expect from This is Happy – I picked it up because the book was recently shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize for literary nonfiction – and based on the title, I expected something, erm, happy. That it is no......more

Goodreads review by Cathryn on April 12, 2016

After hearing an interview with Camilla Gibb on CBC, I wanted to read This Is Happy. I knew a little of what was ahead of me. Her birth family would be broken. She would sink into despair and consider suicide. The safe, secure family she formed with the woman she married would suddenly dissolve, lea......more

Goodreads review by Maayan on October 06, 2016

I burned through this in one sitting while I should have been writing a paper for my comprehensive exams. It defies its somewhat treacly title - this isn't really a sweet book at all, though it is a cautiously redemptive one. I'm getting a bit more familiar with the memoir/personal narrative genre l......more

Goodreads review by Natasha on March 14, 2018

This book left me feeling optimistic and happy. There are some brutal, sad moments in it but there are moments of rising beyond them. Gibb has me thinking about how to look at situations and what parts to tell, as a storyteller.......more

Quotes

National Bestseller
Shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize 
A National Post Best Book of the Year
A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2015
A Quill & Quire Notable Book of 2015

"One of the most exquisite, agonizing and, above all, uplifting books of the year." —The Globe and Mail

"Stunning. . . . An unflinching and moving testimony to how a new kind of family can be built from an old one’s wreckage." —Montreal Gazette

"Anger, honesty, compassion, fear, wit and insight electrify Gibb's deft sentences, singing the importance of belonging, of self-worth and of story, particularly its unique ability to render us knowable to others and to ourselves but, most especially, to our children." —Winnipeg Free Press

"This Is Happy is a raw, exposed nerve sheathed in poetic insights. . . . An honest and unflinching look at the pain of abandonment, and the deep digging and work you must undertake to rebuild your world and find your happiness." —CBC News

"[Gibb is] a gifted storyteller. . . . Her story is touching, human, alive. . . . It is beautifully written, brave and sincere. Enjoy." —The 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. . . . Gibb's themes are important, and she has some powerful insights. . . . There's no doubt this engaging memoir comes from a gifted writer." —NOW (Toronto)

"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." —The Globe and Mail

"Camilla Gibb has written a compelling memoir of new motherhood, altered relationships and a family finding its way to wholeness. How moving this book is, in its quiet resolve and deep compassion." —Anne Michaels, the award-winning author of Fugitive Pieces

"This Is Happy broke me, lifted me up, and filled me. I can't remember the last time I read something so honest, tender, brutal and kind." —Sarah Polley

Awards

  • Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction
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