Vendor
	Foundry Claire Harris
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs

I DON'T HAVE A HAPPY PLACE

Kim Korson

Cheerful Stories of Despondency and Gloom

“Can’t Kim be happy?” This is the question asked of Kim Korson—a female Woody Allen—at her first (and last) shrink appointment, and her chief dilemma in this fresh-voiced, hilarious take on what it means to be a malcontent.

Aside from her father wearing makeup and her mother not feeling well (a lot), Kim Korson’s 1970s suburban upbringing was typical. Sometimes she wished her brother were an arsonist just so she’d have a valid excuse to be unhappy. And when life moves along pretty decently--she breaks into show business, gets engaged in the secluded jungles of Mexico, and moves her family from Brooklyn to dreamy rural Vermont—the real despondency sets in. It’s a skill to find something wrong in just about every situation but Kim has an exquisite talent for negativity. It is only after half a lifetime of finding kernels of unhappiness where others find joy that she begins to wonder if she is even capable of experiencing happiness.

In I Don’t Have a Happy Place, Kim Korson untangles what it means to be a true malcontent. Rife with evocative and nostalgic observations, unapologetic realism, and razor-sharp wit, I Don’t Have a Happy Place is told in humorous, autobiographical stories. This fresh-yet-dark voice is sure to make you laugh, nod your head in recognition, and ultimately understand what it truly means to be unhappy. Always.

Kim Korson is a writer, originally from Montreal, Canada. Kim now lives in Southern Vermont with her husband and two kids. She doesn’t get out much.

Available products
Book Published 2015-04-14 by Gallery
Book Published 2015-04-14 by Gallery

Comments

In the razor-sharp, acerbic I Don’t Have A Happy Place, Kim Korson— think: Jewish, female, Canadian David Sedaris— recounts her adventures as a true malcontent.

a series of side-splittingly funny short stories of past discontent ranging from the untimely drowning of the neighbor’s babysitter to breaking up with her brief show-biz career to wishing she could call out sick from her own wedding. With raw humor, candor, and a voice that will have you nodding along in emphatic agreement, Korson lets readers know—via a good dose of laughter—why it’s totally OK to be a Debbie Downer.

I Don't Have a Happy Place is the book you'll beg your friends to read--for its pitch-perfect humor, scintillating wit, and refreshing depiction of life in all its extraordinary, and ordinary, absurdity. Kim Korson is certainly a new and exciting voice in nonfiction, unafraid to shout out loud the things you and I may only dare to think. I haven't laughed like this since David Sedaris.

Korson’s preoccupations—checking crime blotters for neighborhood stats, being certain that her first child would come out crazy, avoiding chitchat at parties—may keep her firmly in her cranky cave but will strike a funny bone in readers.

Makeup-wearing dads, squirrel attacks, death, Phil Donahue, - there’s something for everybody in Kim Korson’s great new book. And if not having a happy place is what it takes to make writing so hilarious, smart, and honest, I selfishly hope Kim remains miserable within reason for many years to come.

Kim Korson must be stopped. My wife thinks she's funnier than me.

I love this book. It’s like 95 percent cacao chocolate – bitter but delicious.

Kim Korson is your new favorite curmudgeon...She's perfectly happy being unhappy, and she shares her path to negativity and all the merits of discontent in her acerbic, witty memoir, I Don't Have a Happy Place.