I Hope You're Happy - by Marni Appleton (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

'Marni Appleton delivers a thunderous first collection of stories in a distinctive, wholly contemporary style...The joy and bewildering horror of being young and female in the 21st century, trying to negotiate traditional relationships and plain old human desire is parsed in pithy, dark and often ruthless scenarios. Crystal sharp dialogue and a keen sense of humor make this a thoroughly engaging read.' - Helena Mulkerns, The Irish Times

'The characters may stumble into horror-tinged scenarios, but the storytelling is sharp, darkly funny and deft.' -- The Daily Mail

'These beautifully written, female-focused stories stayed with me long past closing the cover. Sensual, alive and haunting. Dark wisps of womanhood.' -- Lucy Prebble, Executive Producer and writer on the Bafta, Golden Globe and Emmy award-winning HBO drama Succession

Exceptional short stories featuring young millennial women, blending dark fantasy and quasi-horror with humor and intellectual dash/ Announcing the arrival of a major talent, I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY is more a warning than a wish.

Photos of women eating go viral, a cookie communicates a threat, and women working dead-end jobs become entangled in the performances around them. Everyday experiences of friendship, family, dating and desire catapult the reader into a creepy vortex of horror. Characters reveal themselves in slippery glimpses, through positive affirmations, social media accounts and secret appetites. With this collection of haunting and haunted stories, Marni Appleton immerses us in a world of fleeting encounters, empty couplings, break ups, bust ups, threesomes and ghosts, giving us a kaleidoscopic overview of twenty-first century life.

Review Quotes

"A darkly comic look at millennial womanhood . . . She writes with empathy for her vulnerable protagonists, conveying their inner conflicts and deceptions." --The Observer

"Sharp, darkly funny and deft." --The Daily Mail

"Things sure have gotten weird, haven't they? Younger generations, contextualized by the internet since birth, face the breakdown of their relationships to art. This breakdown reflects the jumbled, murky, often irretrievably frayed relationships they try to form with each other in a time when it's difficult to identify the purpose of their own human selves in the world allegedly created for them." --Erin Evans, Full Stop