Review by Darcie Czajkowski
“Having doesn’t make you happy; appreciating does.”
Helen
Carpenter has forgotten what it’s like to be happy. She likes her job as a
first grade teacher. She likes her moody, eccentric dog, Pickle. But mostly she
just feels numb and has ever since she divorced her alcoholic husband a year
ago. And for the six years before that while she dealt with their tumultuous
marriage, which finally ended after she miscarried their first child and her
husband was unreachable.
Helen is not
adventurous. She is not outdoorsy. She is not someone who seeks out risks,
especially ones that involve near-death experiences. But she knows that if she
doesn’t change something, she will continue living in an isolated fog. So when
her younger brother, Duncan, whom she never listens to or takes advice from and
is generally just annoyed by his existence, suggests a wilderness survival
course, she surprises him – and herself – by registering for it.
She plans to
go on this trip alone. Granted, there will be a guide and eleven others with
her, but she isn’t there to make friends. She’s there for herself. It’s about
her personal journey. It is about becoming a stronger, more alive woman than
before. It is definitely not an experience that she wants to share with Duncan’s
best friend, Jake, whom she learns is also taking the course when he asks to hitch
a ride with her from Boston to Wyoming. Helen has no interest in interacting
with a guy who is ten years younger and kind of goofy. Or at least that’s how
she’s seen him since he and Duncan became friends in high school.
But feeling
like she can’t say no, Helen agrees to take Jake and comes to find out that
he’s had a crush on her from the first day he saw her: on her wedding day to
her now ex-husband. Since her divorce, Jake has been hoping Helen would notice
him, but he never entered in her purview, likely due to the fact that he was
Duncan’s friend, a brother she never warmed to. A brother that was a surprise
to their family and caused massive changes in Helen’s life as a child.
Yet to Helen’s
surprise, the drive to Wyoming with Jake isn’t bad at all. In fact, she finds
herself enjoying his company to such a startling and unsettling extent that she
insists that they pretend they don’t know each other once they arrive at the
course. Because Helen is going on this trip to better herself, not get mixed up
with some younger guy.
So while
Jake is off making everyone in their group his best friend in that easy,
natural way he has of interacting with people, Helen feels like an outcast. She’s
a decade older than the rest of the group, including their guide, Beckett, who
looks about fifteen. She is participating for self-discovery; the others are
there to get thin and tan, to fulfill college credit, or to wrestle with the
jaws of death and live to tell about it.
But when
things start to get tough, Helen begins to question whether her strategy is
best and wonders if there is a little good, some lesson to be learned from each
and every one of her fellow hikers.
Katherine
Center’s Happiness for Beginners surprised
me as I was expecting the hike and its attendant physical, mental, and
emotional challenges to be the central focus of the book. I expected descriptions
of what it’s like to use a dirt hole as a toilet. To not wash your hair for
twenty-one days. To wear the same sweaty, stinky outfit day in and day out. I
expected perpetual mishaps and near-death encounters with snarling bears. That
was not this story. I came to learn that the wilderness course acted as a
vehicle for Helen to learn more about herself and teach her how to reconnect to
and be present in her life. Katherine Center shares a valuable, relatable message
on how recovering from a crushing loss can be a bumpy road, a journey that requires
traversing many valleys before you reach the peaks. One quote from the book
that I loved: “I had finally come to understand that not getting what you want
is actually the trick to it all. Because not getting what you want forces you
to appreciate what you already have.” For that thoughtful advice and much more,
I’d recommend Happiness for Beginners.
Purchase the book at:
About the Author:
Katherine Center is the author of four
bittersweet comic novels about love and family, including The Bright Side of
Disaster, Everyone Is Beautiful, Get Lucky, and The Lost Husband. Her books and
essays have appeared in Redbook, People, USA Today, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic,
Real Simple, Houstonia, the Dallas Morning News, The Houston Press, and the
Houston Chronicle, as well as the anthologies Because I Love Her: 34 Women
Writers on the Mother-Daughter Bond, My Parents Were Awesome, and CRUSH: 26
Real Life Tales of First Love.
Katherine recently signed a three-book deal with St. Martin's Press. Her newest book, Happiness for Beginners, goes on sale March 2015, and her next one is in the works.
Katherine recently signed a three-book deal with St. Martin's Press. Her newest book, Happiness for Beginners, goes on sale March 2015, and her next one is in the works.
Katherine also Facebooks, Tweets, makes
video essays, teaches writing, and speaks to all kinds of groups and book
clubs. She lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her awesome husband,
two sweet children, and their fluffy-but-fierce dog.
Connect with the author at:
St. Martin’s Press is
giving one lucky winner a print copy of
Happiness For
Beginners by Katherine Center
US Only
a Rafflecopter giveaway
