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I thoroughly enjoyed The Concierge, so I was delighted to pick up a copy of Abby Corson’s new novel, Happy Woman (kindly sent to me for review by my friends at Ultimo Press). I don’t know what I was expecting as a follow-up to Hector Harrow’s story of murder in a hotel… but this wasn’t exactly it.
Happy Woman follows Gwynne, a 35-year-old girlboss and mother who discovers that her gentle, beloved father is a serial killer. When he’s arrested for five gruesome unsolved murders in the north of England, her once-happy life is upended. Her days quickly descend into domestic tension and drunkenness, and she narrates for her daughter how it all came undone.
What struck me reading Happy Woman is that the characters lacked the lovability of Hector Harrow from The Concierge. Everyone in this book is pretty hateful: Gwynne refuses to recognise that her drinking is escalating her problems, Gwynne’s mother is in a perpetual state of denial, Gwynne’s brother is a ne’er-do-well, Gwynne’s uncle is a chain-smoking shirker, Gwynne’s husband is pretty self-centered, and her father is a man who viciously murdered strangers instead of going to therapy.
Not every story needs a lovable narrator, of course, but it was really hard to find anyone to root for. Plus, there are a few twists crammed into the final chapter that didn’t feel earned, or even really necessary.
What I do love is the question at the heart of Happy Woman: what are women capable of when the men in their lives let them down? It’s a fascinating question, and I hope Corson continues to explore it in her fiction.
Read Happy Woman on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)
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