Happiness Forever, Adelaide Faith
Happiness Forever, Adelaide Faith
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Happiness Forever
A Novel

Author: Adelaide Faith

Narrator: Hanako Footman

Unabridged: 5 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/13/2025


Synopsis

A complete refreshment and uplift of energy: a hilarious, beguiling first novel for the head and the heart.

Sylvie is happy only when she’s in therapy. This is because Sylvie is in love with her therapist; she thinks about her every second they’re not together (roughly 167 hours and 10 minutes per week). In that room, Sylvie is able to talk about everything: the false hope promised by eighties music; what a dog’s inner life is really like and how sad, she, Sylvie is, outside that room. She’s aware she has an obsession, but whether it’s some flavor of erotic transference or a lost person’s need to connect, Sylvie isn’t sure.

Outside therapy Sylvie has what she considers to be a small life: a job as a veterinary nurse, companionship from her tattoo artist friend via text, and seaside walks with her brain-damaged dog, Curtains. But maybe therapy is making a difference, inviting her to imagine possibilities—possibilities that include a new friend she meets on the beach.

When the therapist starts to prepare Sylvie for the terrible fact that all treatment has to come to an end, Sylvie can’t stop herself from imagining sleeping in her car parked outside the therapist’s house. That won’t work. She has to be brave. Be brave, Sylvie! We love you.

In this wonderful, hilarious, stunning debut, Adelaide Faith captures the vulnerability, difficulty and joy of personhood, of being a person, of being alive.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

About Adelaide Faith

Adelaide Faith worked as an editor at Channel 4 Learning before training to be a veterinary nurse at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, after which she worked as a nurse at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals. Her short fiction has appeared in Forever Magazine, Hobart, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Maudlin House, Farewell Transmission, ExPat Press, and Vlad Mag. She is a member of Chelsea Hodson’s Morning Writing Club, and she lives in Hastings, England, with her daughter and dogs.

About Hanako Footman

Hanako Footman is a British-Japanese actor and novelist living in London.She studied at LAMDA, and has since gone on to star in notable television, film, and theater projects, from the Emmy Award–winning The Crown, to the West End world premiere of Mad House.Her debut novel, Mongrel, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize in 2024.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kate on May 30, 2025

I'm afraid this book missed the mark for me. The blurb said "hilarious". I didn't laugh once. In fact, I found the whole book somewhat depressing. Sylvie is a young woman who works as a veterinary nurse, a job she enjoys. However she has also had a string of traumatic relationships - Nick, her first......more

Goodreads review by Rose on January 14, 2025

I was a bit disappointed by this one. It positions itself as a story of an unhinged queer obsession but in reality it’s just an account of relatively straightforward therapy sessions. The main character Sylvie is obsessed with her therapist. She lives alone with her brain damaged dog in a seaside tow......more

Goodreads review by Laura on May 08, 2025

On paper, Happiness, Forever seemed like it would be right up my alley. I really enjoyed Big Swiss and expected something equally strange, sharp, and queer. Unfortunately, by the 50% mark, nothing had happened to keep my interest, and I genuinely didn’t care to continue. The book gives off the impres......more

Goodreads review by Sarah (sarahanneisreading) on June 02, 2025

3.5 stars......more

Goodreads review by Ali on May 10, 2025

Bingeable, fast-paced, and fun, Happiness Forever is a fantastic debut novel. Sylvie wants to be in therapy forever, so much so that it consumes her. When she's not in therapy, she's thinking about therapy, and when she's not talking to her therapist, she's daydreaming about her or looking at the on......more


Quotes

Advance Praise

“This accomplished debut tackles complex topics—obsession, grief, and abuse among them—with remarkable clarity and humor.”
—Hannah Jackson, Vogue (Best Books of the Year So Far)

“Witty and irreverent . . . Faith’s razor-sharp prose and Sylvie’s fanciful thinking sustain the offbeat narrative. Readers will fall in love with this meditative and heartfelt novel.”
Publishers Weekly

"I was mesmerized by Happiness Forever, and helplessly caught in its spell from the first page. There is so much rare humor and insight and sweetness and humanity in its pages, and a true and ringing voice. It's a beautiful book about longing, and the feeling that one is not a self, and being hurt, and the vulnerability of simply being alive, and friendship, and obsession, and therapy. I wanted to pass it on to all my friends."
—Sheila Heti, author of Alphabetical Diaries

"Happiness Forever explores what happens when we let ourselves be truly transformed by obsession and longing. Adelaide Faith's writing is unrestrained and voyeuristic, resulting in a truly special book. Not only is this novel surprising and funny, it's also poignant and philosophical in its exploration of what it means to watch and be watched. This is a book I won't soon forget."
—Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else


Awards

  • New Yorker Best Books of the Year