Anne Giardini
Teoksen The Sad Truth About Happiness tekijä
Tietoja tekijästä
Image credit: Anne Giardini
Tekijän teokset
Associated Works
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Virallinen nimi
- Giardini, Anne
- Syntymäaika
- 1959
- Sukupuoli
- female
- Kansalaisuus
- Canada
- Asuinpaikat
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - Koulutus
- Simon Fraser University (Economics)
UBC (LLB | 1984)
University of Cambridge (LLM | 1998) - Ammatit
- Lawyer
Columnist, National Post
President, Weyerhauser Corporation
Chancellor, Simon Fraser University - Suhteet
- Shields, Carol (moeder)
- Palkinnot ja kunnianosoitukset
- Queen's Counsel
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
Palkinnot
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Associated Authors
Tilastot
- Teokset
- 2
- Also by
- 1
- Jäseniä
- 207
- Suosituimmuussija
- #106,920
- Arvio (tähdet)
- 3.0
- Kirja-arvosteluja
- 13
- ISBN:t
- 17
- Kuinka monen suosikki
- 1
Maggie is in her 30s, has a responsible job, good friends, a loving family and, since she lives in Vancouver, is surrounded by amazing scenery. She doesn't have a romantic relationship at the moment but she's not obsessed about finding someone. Everything seems to be going well until she takes a quiz her roommate put together for a women's magazine that purports to tell a person how long they will live. Even though Maggie is in good shape and doesn't take part in risky activities, the quiz says she has three months to live. It all comes down to the final question which asks if she is happy? Maggie says she is not completely happy which counts as a no. If she had answered yes, the quiz would predict she would live to 96. As much as Maggie would like to discount the quiz she starts to experience insomnia and yet, her doctor can't find anything wrong with her. She tries to carry on her life and as chance would have it, three different men come into her life. Maggie may be a little gun-shy about commitment because of her sisters' experiences with love. Her one sister recently returned from living in Rome and now she is engaged and pregnant. Yet she keeps saying that she still loves the man who was her lover in Rome regardless of the fact that he is married and won't leave his wife. As the three months draw to a close, Maggie has no time to worry about whether her death is impending because her sister gives birth and shortly after her Roman lover and his wife show up to claim the baby. Maggie decides to take the baby away from Vancouver until the custody can be clarified. So she, her roommate and the baby take off to Quebec and, with the help of friends, get taken to a small francophone community where a nursing mother has lots of breast milk to spare. Eventually, they have to go back to Vancouver and face the music. At the close of the book, Maggie says that she and most of the people she knows well are happy "Happiness is more ephemeral than thought. It can't be observed without changing its nature. Its ingredients are subtle, and there is no guarantee that a formula or recipe for joy can be written out or passed on or repeated even once again. Happiness evades capture, dissolving like a melody into the air, eluding even the most delicate, careful grasp. It frustrates any systemaic search, responding better to random fossicking and oblizue approaches, and its rewards are infuriatingly arbitrary, stingy or abundant by purest chance."
The message of this book is that happiness cannot be pursued. I feel happier already.… (lisätietoja)