No Happy Endings: A Memoir
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About this ebook
The author of It’s Okay to Laugh and host of the popular podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking—interviews that are “a gift to be able to listen [to]” (New York Times)—returns with more hilarious meditations on her messy, wonderful, bittersweet, and unconventional life.
Life has a million different ways to kick you right in the chops. We lose love, lose jobs, lose our sense of self. For Nora McInerny, it was losing her husband, her father, and her unborn second child in one catastrophic year.
But in the wake of loss, we get to assemble something new from whatever is left behind. Some circles call finding happiness after loss “Chapter 2”—the continuation of something else. Today, Nora is remarried and mothers four children aged 16 months to 16 years. While her new circumstances bring her extraordinary joy, they are also tinged with sadness over the loved ones she’s lost.
Life has made Nora a reluctant expert in hard conversations. On her wildly popular podcast, she talks about painful experiences we 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. She knows intimately that when your life falls apart, there’s a mad rush to be okay—to find a silver lining, to get to the happy ending. In this, her second memoir, Nora offers a tragicomic exploration of the tension between finding happiness and holding space for the unhappy experiences that have shaped us.
No Happy Endings is a book for people living life after life has fallen apart. It’s a book for people who know that they’re moving forward, not moving on. It’s a book for people who know life isn’t always happy, but it isn’t the end: there will be unimaginable joy and incomprehensible tragedy. As Nora reminds us, there will be no happy endings—but there will be new beginnings.
Nora McInerny
Nora McInerny is the author of It’s Okay to Laugh and No Happy Endings, the host of the Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast, co-founder of the Hot Young Windows Club, and the founder of the nonprofit Still Kickin. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Read more from Nora Mc Inerny
The Hot Young Widows Club: Lessons on Survival from the Front Lines of Grief Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Happy Endings: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Moms: The Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Our Lady of Hot Messes: Getting Real with God in Dive Bars and Confessionals Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Reviews for No Happy Endings
40 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nora is such an excellent writer & folks can learn a lot about life through reading her work
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It seems that this summer I’m reading lots of book that fit memoir with a dash of self-help. I’ve been following Nora’s story off-and-on for many years since we lived in MN. Her husband died from a brain tumor at 35, not long after she had a miscarriage and a few weeks after her dad died. Yes, ridiculously sad, but her thoughts on life and grief and how she picks up the pieces are so good. Plus, she’s very very funny. She’s one of my favorite instagram accounts by far.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a well written, painfully honest book. I did not finish it, not because of the writing or subject, but because I couldn't really relate to the things she was dealing with (kids, dating, etc). I have no doubt that someone in a similar period of their life (which I am well past) will find this well worth their time.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book has a high overall rating yet I see tons of two and three star reviews. I'm not familiar with the author at ALL, but I found her funny and earnest and really liked this book. It felt like the right book at the right time for me.