The author of It’s Okay to Laugh and host of the popular podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking—interviews that are a “a gift to be able to listen [to]” (New York Times)—returns with a look at what happens when you have to keep living when your life falls apart.
When Nora McInerny’s husband Aaron died of brain cancer just weeks after she lost her second pregnancy and her father, she was officially having the Worst Year Ever. But her toddler son Ralph, her Midwestern sense of getting on with it, her oddball sense of humor, and her writing kept her putting one foot in front of the other. Being in absolute and utter shock didn’t hurt, either. One result was It’s Okay to Laugh, her memoir written at a fever pitch in the six months after Aaron’s death, a national bestseller that earned Nora the mantle “Anne Lamott for the emoji generation.” On the heels of the book came her award-winning podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking; a TED Talk; and writing gigs for Elle, Time, Slate, Vox, BuzzFeed, and lots of other cool places.
In under a year, Nora had become one of the biggest (and youngest) voices on living honestly and messily through grief.
And then something really crazy happened. One night while sitting around a backyard bonfire at a friend’s house, she met a guy who literally fell out of his chair introducing himself. And against all notion of what would be considered kosher or cautious or wise, in a few months she was pregnant, and she and Matthew were figuring out how to blend their families and just how new love and new grief feel when they’re braided together in a new relationship.
In No Happy Endings, Nora offers a tragicomic exploration of the tension between finding happiness and holding space for the unhappy experiences that have shaped us.
- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Dey Street (March 24, 2020)
- ISBN-13: 978-0062699770