No Happy Endings by Nora McInerny
It’s tough referring to yourself as a reluctant expert in difficult conversations. But that’s how Nora McInerny has built her brand, first as host of the award-winning podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking, and now with her new memoir, No Happy Endings (Dey Street).
The latest memoir, which follows her original memoir It’s Okay to Laugh, offers more heartbreaking and humorous meditations on her messy, wonderful and unconventional life. McInerny knows how to discuss the painful experiences we all inevitably face and exposes the absurdity of the question “how are you?” that people often ask when we’re coping with the aftermath of emotional catastrophe.
And McInerny has had her share: She was grief-stricken by the death of her husband, father and miscarriage of her second child within months of each other. A widowed, single mother of a young son, she found her way to assemble something new from the emptiness of her loss.
McInerny knows intimately that when your life falls apart, there’s a mad rush to be ok – to find a silver lining, to get to the happy ending. In No Happy Endings, McInerny offers a tragicomic exploration of the tension between finding happiness and holding space for the unhappy experiences that have shaped us.
Life isn’t always happy, McInerny reminds us, but it isn’t the end – there will be unimaginable joy and incomprehensible tragedy through it all. There will be no happy endings, just new beginnings, she says.
“When bad things happen to you – death, an illness, a divorce, a job loss – you quickly go from being a person to being just a sad story,” she writes. “I know from experience that nobody wants to be a sad story, and that no matter what you’ve been through, your story is always so much more than just sad.
“And your happy stories are more than just happy. Obviously, everything is more complicated than it appears on Instagram. But it is incredibly difficult to live with complicated.”
Today, McInerny is remarried, and mother of four children ranging from toddler to teen. While her new circumstances bring her great joy, she knows life is tinged with sadness over her losses.
“If you read the fine print, you will find that life is subject to change without notice,” she says. “The acknowledgment that when bad things happen they can just keep happening holds a lot of power…But the flip side of tragedy is happiness. And that can come in waves, too.”
McInerny has a singular style full of unique perspective and a voice that makes incomprehensible tragedy at least somewhat comprehensible.
No Happy Endings will be available on March 26, 2019.
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