My Happy Life

Name: My Happy Life
Brand: Dreamscape Media
Availability: InStock
Author: Lydia Millet
ISBN: 9781662074721

Author: Lydia Millet

Narrator: Julia Whelan

Unabridged: 3 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Dreamscape Media

Published: 05/20/2021

Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

At the opening of My Happy Life, the unnamed narrator of this bittersweet fictional memoir has been abandoned in a locked room of a defunct hospital for the mentally ill. She hasn't seen the nice man who brings her food in days; she's eaten the soap and the toothpaste; she tried to eat the plaster on her walls, a dietary adventure that ended none too well. And yet, curiously, the narrator is happy. Despite a lifetime of neglect, physical abuse, and loss, she's incapable of perceiving slight or injury. She has infinite faith in the goodwill of others, loves even her enemies, and finds grace and communion in places most people wouldn't dare to look. By stepping outside her meager circumstances, she's able to live each moment as though it were her lastwith gratitude, longing, and delight.Lauded by both critics and listeners, My Happy Life consistently surprises and excites with its original vision of a unique woman whose rich interior life protects her from the horrors of external reality.

About Lydia Millet

Lydia Millet is the PEN Award-winning author of eleven works of literary fiction, including Sweet Lamb of Heaven and Magnificence, which have been New York Times Notables and Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists. She lives in Arizona.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jodi on February 21, 2009

Saying that I really, really loved Lydia Millet’s My Happy Life makes me feel a little bit creepy. There isn’t much happy in the life of our unnamed narrator who talks about her life while being locked up in an asylum that has apparently been abandoned. Unnamed Narrator has not had it easy. She was f......more

Goodreads review by MJ on August 14, 2017

Millet parks the comic brio and replaces her exuberant humour with a poetically insane narrator who maintains a sort of aloof optimism throughout the horrific episodes that comprise her “happy” life. The result is a flat and opaque tone that encases the brutal events in an unbelievable literary lang......more

Goodreads review by Bilal on February 27, 2018

Ben deli değilim. Kimi zaman kendimi deliliğin kıyılarında hissetsem de deli olmadığım, beni tanıyan insanların ortak görüşü. Benim Mutlu Hayatım adlı romanı da bir deli anlatıyor, eğer deli taklidi yapan biri değilse. Ama ben deli olduğu konusunda ikna oldum. Evet kahramanımız bir çok kez deli gibi......more

Goodreads review by Robert on July 26, 2018

Surprisingly, this short novel has a lot in common with my last fiction read, Wolfgang Hilbig's Old Rendering Plant. Both are very upsetting pictures of horrific worlds limited closely to one young person at different stages of his/her life, told in claustrophobic first-person narration. They are mo......more

Goodreads review by Aviendha on September 08, 2016

Zaten üzüntüm bana hiçbir zaman fazla zarar vermemiştir. Demek istediğim, üzüntünün benliğimi bütünüyle sarmasına izin verirsem bir süre sonra kendimi arınmış hissediyorum. Üzüntü, yalnızca kaybedilen anların ve fırsatların etrafında yön değiştiren bir rüzgardır. Ben de kaybettiklerimi mutlulukla ha......more