It was at the Whistler Writers Festival that I had my first in-depth introduction to the world of short stories and since then, they’re a genre I seek out. The beauty of this form of writing is that you’re not committing to a full novel (time is precious), although the downside is that if you fall in love with, or are intrigued by the characters, you only have a short time with them. The latter situation happened to me when I read Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy, which considers what it means to find happiness and how often it comes through the grace of others.

In the first story, she transports you to New Year’s Eve in Vancouver, where two addicts rob a string of high-end parties to fund their own recovery. It’s gritty, exciting and took me right out of the comfort of my cozy bed that night.

“She blanked on the name they’d decided for her this time. Different name, different coat, different shoes, different hair. Different people in the security video in the identical lobbies. But the name was gone, like Kayla.”

A Way to Be Happy is Adderson’s third book of short stories, which sit alongside five novels, multiple non-fiction essays and a wealth of books for young readers. Her work has received numerous award nominations including the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist—to name a few.

If you read the acknowledgments section at the end of the book you get a tiny glimpse into how Adderson’s mind works and how she finds her ideas for such a varied collection of stories. One of these has haunted me since I finished the book, the story called “From the Archives of the Hospital for the Insane,” where a disparate group of women attempt to help a young girl escape. Adderson lists her research and it is extensive, including books, journals and original materials sourced from the BC Archives.

“She shuffled along and, reaching the door, pushed it—so heavy! And then the shock, not just the cold of the air, but after years of sealed rooms, the barrage of odours. The fishy river, the green scent of firs, the wet black loam. Lucy had called the hospital a stink hole, but when you live in it, you don’t notice the sweat or farts or the emanations from two-hundred chamber pots.” 

Adderson flits from the insane asylum to a Russian hitman with a mysterious lung ailment to a middle-aged man worrying about a routine colonoscopy. And this is what I mean about the beauty of the short story, that only a pro like Adderson can make them seem effortless. They move quickly, enabling you to inhabit incredible characters grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary­—all suffering in the messiness of the human condition. A Way to Be Happy is an intriguing, unpredictable whirlwind of a read.

Caroline Adderson appears in Compassion and Happiness: A Conversation with Writers of Fiction on Oct. 19 at 10:15 a.m. She also moderates the Sunday BookTalk and Breakfast on Oct. 20. Doors open at 10:45 a.m. for that event. Tickets are on sale now. 

Review is by Dee Raffo. Raffo is a screenwriter and the content editor for Tourism Whistler. She loves revelling in the mountains with her young family and can often be found on the ski hill and bike trails.