“This year’s winner (The Happiness Jar) is a compelling story about awakening and renewal. Written in a beautiful and direct style, its journey of transformation takes us from the Australian city, to remote country, to the crowded streets of India. Its characters are wonderfully and vividly drawn: raw and never sentimental. Through their experiences, Samantha Tidy prompts us to reexamine our understandings of grief, legacy, honesty and family. The Happiness Jar is a powerfully constructed and at times surprising work: a thread that runs back and forth in time between different cultures, places and points-of-view. Above all, it is a satisfying, original and engaging novel with a unique perspective, and a worthy winner in 2014.”
Reformat coming, February 2023!
2013 Edition
Winner, ACT Writing and Publishing Award for Fiction 2014
Runner Up, FAW Christina Stead Award 2013
Runner Up, FAW Jim Hamilton Award, 2010
Shortlist, Penguin Varuna Scholarship, 2011
Shortlist, HarperCollins Varuna Award, 2011
Published by Storytorch Press, 1 February 2023
RRP: $32.95
Adult Fiction, 336pp
Available from any Australian bookstore. Just tell them it is a Peribo title.
Want to buy a signed copy? Buy online here.
SynopsiS
The Happiness Jar is an Australian story with quintessential characters, played out against the colourful and pressing heat of the remote Kimberley in the wet season, juxtaposed with the smoky heat and hum of a busy thriving city in India.
A family seemingly breaks apart with the weight of the burdens they have placed on themselves and on each other. The narrative’s conflict is driven by family secrets – the relief at the expected passing of a child with a long-term illness, the unspoken challenges of living with a Vietnam veteran father with PTSD, and two adult siblings and their tolerance of a mother’s neurotic approach to managing life with a husband who has chosen to be declared missing for 20 years.
The Happiness Jar is at its heart, a story of faith in oneself, in each other and of redemption. It the story of three journeys, intertwined and interdependent, in the wake of a loved one’s death, reminding us as it always does, of the shortness of our own lives. This is a love story, of self-love.
REVIEWS
“So far I have four favourite books this year.....Delicious, The Light Between Oceans, And the Mountains Echoed and The Language of Flowers....however The Happiness Jar is now my number one “recommend”......read it....the story, the characters and the message are unforgettable....thx Samantha”
“This is one of the best Australian novels related to what Tidy calls the “war nobody would talk about.” Tidy does a marvelous job creating and bringing alive the alien world of Australia for this American reader. Her prose is so evocative I could feel the ever-present flies crawling on my eyes and ears as I read the book. I highly recommend this book to those who know little or nothing of Australia’s contribution to what we imprecisely call the American War in Vietnam.”
“The Happiness Jar will take the reader on a journey of discovery, of oneself and those whom we love, and others we may not love at all. A wonderful read from start to finish. I was left pondering at the end, my own mortality, outlook and relationships. Samantha Tidy has penned a book that you may well want to read again and again. ”
“The way it was written was beautiful and very descriptive. I loved reading about the Aboriginal people and their way of life. I could relate in many ways to the families lives that changed forever after the Father came back from Vietnam.”
“A lovely truthful story about real people. Life isn’t easy but it can be measured with happiness one moment at a time. It had me in tears on more than one occasion and I will surely be recommending it. Thank you Samantha Tidy.”
“This book had me from page one. Beautifully written and very thought provoking... From exotic, colorful and dirty India to the harsh yet inspiring outback of our wonderful country, this book had me captured... Loved, loved, loved it!!!!”