Happiness: A Memoir

The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After

Written and Narrated By: Heather Harpham

Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins

A dramatic narration sometimes pushes this very good book over the top

Let’s just get to Point One: Heather Harpham is an exuberant woman who feels things strongly; aaaaall things, like, waaaaaay, strong! That means that whenever her narrative shows that she was excited at the time, she shrieks with excitement. Feeling abandoned and frustrated? Shrieks. Feeling God isn’t quite pulling his weight? Shrieks.

At first I thought I was never going to get into it, that the narration was toooo off-putting. NOT listening to it was NOT an option as this book was chosen by my sister for her Birthday List. So I, good li’l Sis that I am :) trundled bravely on.

And >phew< ! The writing really saved it for me at the beginning there because Harpham writes really, really well. She has a grand sense of her environment, of atmosphere, has a total way with imagery. Really, some lovely, lovely writing. But then? Well, darned if I didn’t get into a kind of a rhythm with the narration. I s’pose it’s because I understood Harpham’s angst, her frustrations, her fears. By the time she bellowed at Brian, the soon-to-be father of her unplanned child, I was so totally getting her. I know. I dated someone who had Brian’s same wishes, married him as a matter of fact, but in my case? My “Brian” wound up winning whereas Heather Harpham had the gumption to follow her heart and shake a leg on over to California to do everything on her own.

The story follows the development of Heather and Brian’s relationship, their development as mother and father to Gracie, a girl who, it turns out, is born with a deadly blood disease and all THAT entails. And it goes on to their having another child, Gabriel who, as the fates would have it, is a perfect match as a stem cell donor for Gracie. It was very, very much a relief that they didn’t have the baby in the hopes of saving their daughter. Rather, he was unplanned, and their sole worry was that he would be born with the same blood disease.

Things become quite desperate as Gracie’s health deteriorates and choices have to be made. The best parts of the book are when Heather and Brian turn to each other for comfort and solace. The worst parts are when Heather looks at Brian and feels nothing but rage and blaming (Which, considering the narration, means: Shrieks!). The saddest parts are when setbacks occur for not only Gracie but for other children in the hospital that we come to know and love.

All in all, this is a really good book that ends as it starts, with the question of happiness. Brian observes that Heather appears to have her happiness set point up high but that his is set quite low. It’s interesting to watch all this in action throughout the book as it seems Brian has already thought of every single thing that can go wrong (A man after my own amygdala), but Heather has the rug yanked from under her by every new challenge. So this is also a book about a Happy Person becoming Desperately Unhappy then going on to be Grateful.

And finally ending up at Happy again. Sure, 11 hours of hospitals (And shrieks) can get kinda long, but when you have an ending like that?

What’s not to like?!?