BE NORMAL, BUT NOT ORDINARY

Ashley Wurzbacher Loot.co.za (R351) UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS

Happy Like

This punches at, it’s that we’re all lab rats and life is a cage.

The first story is about young women living in a college dorm for students with factitious disorders – they are referred to not by name, but by number – who become subjects of a sociological thesis.

Life as Wurzbacher paints it feels less like the pursuit of happiness than the slow accumulation of random, pointless indignities.

These indignities rain down harder on some characters than others.

One of the best stories is about a lonely woman who impersonates her happily engaged friend in an unusual pen-pal correspondence.

Her ostensible excuse:

The friend is a recovering drug addict.

But it’s obvious the narrator is motivated not by a desire to help, but to be heard – she wonders of herself: “Was she nothing without someone to take care of?”

Wurzbacher’s characters define themselves in relation to others, but they can’t seem to do it without making a mess.

Taking its title from To the Lighthouse, Happy Like This wrestles with the idea that a central struggle of humanity is to fit in while also standing out – to be normal, but not ordinary.

This theme can be found on every page, though I wouldn’t say any two stories are alike. Wurzbacher, a debut author who was named as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honourees this year, deploys her encyclopaedic command of various ideas, regions, professions and lexicons with the authority of seasoned masters like Adam Johnson.

This is a writer at the top of her game; but hopefully she’s only just getting started.