Happiness forever A novel

Review by Booklist Review

Faith's debut novel follows Sylvie, a socially awkward veterinary assistant who is obsessed with Pierrot (the mime character)and believes her brain-damaged dog, Curtains, might be the reincarnation of her dead father. Low on self-esteem, Sylvie has always sought validation from romantic partners. After a series of codependent relationships, she finds herself single. But instead of jumping into a new relationship, Sylvie decides to do something different and begin psychotherapy--only to become fixated on her new therapist. When Sylvie is not taking care of sick animals, she counts the hours until her next therapy session, scrolling through the therapist's social media accounts, desperate for clues about her personal life and fantasizing about being able to physically touch her. Faith masterfully balances Sylvie's dialogue-heavy sessions with her counselor with unflinchingly honest descriptions of her inner thoughts and surroundings. Fans of Judith Rossner's August and Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (2017) will enjoy this slow-paced novel of one woman's journey to find happiness without asking for permission.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In Faith's witty and irreverent debut, a British woman develops an unshakable obsession with her therapist. Sylvie, a veterinarian nurse, scrolled through 23 pages of therapists before choosing the "only one... who didn't strike her as too annoying to talk to." After a few sessions, Sylvia spots her unnamed therapist on the street while the two women are out walking their dogs, and she's overcome with desire for the therapist's love and approval ("She felt she might be saved.... There was a sense that a great freedom was close"). Instead of greeting her therapist, though, she picks up her dog and runs away. As the sessions unfold, the reader learns Sylvia has a history of fixations on unattainable people, such as a crime writer whose attention she sought by presenting him with a drawing of his dog. In the third act, the therapist delivers upsetting news, prompting Sylvie to search for the strength to rely on herself. Faith's razor-sharp prose and Sylvie's fanciful thinking sustain the offbeat narrative. Readers will fall in love with this meditative and heartfelt novel. Agent: Seren Adams, Lexington Literary. (May)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A deeply awkward British woman becomes obsessed with her therapist. Sylvie, a veterinary nurse in her early 30s, is so deeply uncomfortable in her own skin that she never feels quite sure she's a person like other people. That inner alienation, along with a bad relationship with a controlling boyfriend she hasn't fully recovered from, are the reasons she tentatively decides to try therapy. As she explains to the unnamed therapist, "I don't know…I feel like I shouldn't be allowed entry, maybe. Like your house is in the world for successful people." The therapist explains that there is no "successful world" and "unsuccessful world"; there is only one world, and they are both in it. Faith's debut novel revolves around Sylvie coming to accept that idea. Along the way, she becomes infatuated with the therapist to the extent that she can barely function during the 167 hours each week (she's counted) she's not in the office. The obsession revolves not around the therapist's generic, anodyne insights but around her appearance, upon which Sylvie ruminates continually. In the attempt to figure out "which part of the therapist's face was driving her crazy," she creates screenshots of the various features. "She had wanted to work out how small a section of the eyes and the hair could drive her crazy, so she'd zoomed in on these sections, further and further"--at which point she goes into an ecstatic state, "where there is calm and there is certainty and in the certainty there is ecstasy, and for once she is a natural animal, and the world is just as directed, and it is beautiful." This is the happiest moment in the novel. Meanwhile, Sylvie makes a friend named Chloe who seems to instantly understand her and love her, but this doesn't have much effect on anything. Similarly, at one point we learn that her mother is dead, but like her brain-damaged dog and her friend Conrad in London, the information sits like a piece of furniture that is rarely used. A strange and underdeveloped book. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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