Happiness Forever

In Faith’s witty and irreverent debut, a British woman develops an unshakable obsession with her therapist. Sylvie, a veterinarian nurse, scrolled through 23 pages of therapists before choosing the “only one... who didn’t strike her as too annoying to talk to.” After a few sessions, Sylvia spots her unnamed therapist on the street while the two women are out walking their dogs, and she’s overcome with desire for the therapist’s love and approval (“She felt she might be saved.... There was a sense that a great freedom was close”). Instead of greeting her therapist, though, she picks up her dog and runs away. As the sessions unfold, the reader learns Sylvia has a history of fixations on unattainable people, such as a crime writer whose attention she sought by presenting him with a drawing of his dog. In the third act, the therapist delivers upsetting news, prompting Sylvie to search for the strength to rely on herself. Faith’s razor-sharp prose and Sylvie’s fanciful thinking sustain the offbeat narrative. Readers will fall in love with this meditative and heartfelt novel. Agent: Seren Adams, Lexington Literary. (May)