I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY
Exceptional short stories featuring young millennial women, blending dark fantasy and quasi-horror with humour and intellectual dash.
Photos of women eating go viral, a cookie communicates a threat, and women working dead-end jobs become entangled in the performances around them. Everyday experiences of friendship, family, dating and desire catapult the reader into a creepy vortex of horror. Characters reveal themselves in slippery glimpses, through positive affirmations, social media accounts and secret appetites.
With this collection of haunting and haunted stories, Marni Appleton immerses us in a world of fleeting encounters, empty couplings, break ups, bust ups, threesomes and ghosts, giving us a kaleidoscopic overview of twenty-first century life.
Cover design © Luke Bird
Cover photograph © French Anderson Ltd
Published: 20 Feb 2025
Length: 288 pages
ISBN: 978-1911648871
Selected praise for I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY:
The Irish Times
‘Marni Appleton delivers a thunderous first collection of stories… The joy and bewildering horror of being young and female in the 21st century, trying to negotiate traditional relationships and plain old human desire, is parsed in pithy, dark and often ruthless scenarios.’
Books in brief, 29 March 2025.
The Observer
‘Appleton’s wry observational style is well suited to these tales of young women navigating the modern world. She writes with empathy for her vulnerable protagonists, conveying their inner conflicts and deceptions.’
A darkly comic look at millennial womanhood, 24 March 2025.
Full Stop
‘Appleton can stretch suspense through a story, binding her reader to the page, so effectively it should be studied . . . a fire alarm couldn’t have torn me from this book.’
I Hope You're Happy by Marni Appleton, 30 June 2025
Arts Hub Australia
‘These short stories are a must-read for fans of unpredictable, politically-attuned fiction about what it means to be a woman in a modern world.’
Book review: I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY, Marni Appleton, 30 May 2025
Pandora Sykes
‘[Marni Appleton] writes with incisiveness and raw honesty, covering the subjects of sex, social media and ambition. These are stories of desire and yearning in the 21st century: of indecision, anxiety and intimacy. If you’re a fan of short stories, add this biting, youthful collection to your TBR pile.’
Pick of New Writers to Read Now in Country & Townhouse Magazine.
Nuala McGovern
‘Hair-raising, eye-popping and thought-provoking.’
The Daily Mail
‘The characters may stumble into horror-tinged scenarios, but the storytelling is sharp, darkly funny and deft.’
Irish Examiner
‘Shifting between the first and third person, [Appleton’s] stories forensically dissect the subtle power dynamics of relationships’.
Distorted view of reality is a common theme, 12 July 2025.