Happily

A Personal History—with Fairy Tales

By: Sabrina Orah Mark

Narrated by: Gilli Messer

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD • A beautifully written memoir-in-essays on fairy tales and their surprising relevance to modern life, from a Jewish woman raising Black children in the American South—based on her acclaimed Paris Review column “Happily”

“One of the most inventive, phenomenally executed books I’ve read in decades.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

FINALIST FOR THE SOUTHERN BOOK PRIZE

The literary tradition of the fairy tale has long endured as the vehicle by which we interrogate the laws of reality. These fantastical stories, populated with wolves, kings, and wicked witches, have throughout history served as a template for understanding culture, society, and that muddy terrain we call our collective human psyche. In Happily, Sabrina Orah Mark reimagines the modern fairy tale, turning it inside out and searching it for the wisdom to better understand our contemporary moment in what Mark so incisively calls “this strange American weather.”

Set against the backdrop of political upheaval, viral plague, social protest, and climate change, Mark locates the magic in the mundane and illuminates the surreality of life as we know it today. She grapples with a loss of innocence in “Sorry, Peter Pan, We’re Over You,” when her son decides he would rather dress up as Martin Luther King, Jr., than Peter Pan for Halloween. In “The Evil Stepmother,” Mark finds unlikely communion with wicked wives and examines the roots of their bad reputation. And in “Rapunzel, Draft One Thousand,” the hunt for a wigmaker in a time of unprecedented civil unrest forces Mark to finally confront her sister’s cancer diagnosis and the stories we tell ourselves to get by.

Revelatory, whimsical, and utterly inspired, Happily is a testament to the singularity of Sabrina Orah Mark’s voice and the power of the fantastical to reveal essential truths about life, love, and the meaning of family.

©2023 Sabrina Orah Mark (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“With milk teeth, bread crumbs, pebbles, and tears, Sabrina Orah Mark illumines the outermost expanses of motherhood’s chaos, cruelty, and love. She confidently wields the weird logic of the fairy tale; bewitched, I didn’t even try to distinguish the real from the unreal. I just wanted to follow this thrillingly distinctive book wherever it went.” —Sarah Manguso, author of Very Cold People

“Who is this stunning sorceress of love and lightness and language wrapped around the heavy? We are so lucky to have her to consider the world with us. This book is going onto my fairy-tale class syllabus pronto but beyond the tales it’s also such a powerful investigation of motherhood, of personhood, chock-full of truly amazing associations. A keeper.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Color Master and The Butterfly Lampshade

“Sabrina Orah Mark’s lapidary sentences hitched together can make us understand fairy tales better but not by any means so obvious as explaining them. These are fairy tales that are essays on fairy tales but also incantations, confessions, news analysis, personal history, and reminders that fairy tales are dainty things capable of doing a lot of heavy lifting of the contents of our imaginations and the aches of our hearts. Which is my long-winded way of saying: Amazing! Gorgeous! Read this!” —Rebecca Solnit, author of Waking Beauty and Men Explain Things to Me

Weaves a magical spell

Lyrical, perceptive, intimate and universal, this lovely listen is filled with beautiful insights and imagery. I came under the spell of this book completely and have already started listening to it again!

A bit grim

The writer seemed intent on finding the darkness in every fairy tale. Her mother was awful. I’d expected more of a memoir. But I’m sure she will have a devoted audience.