Really Good, Actually: The must-read major Sunday Times bestselling debut novel of 2023

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It's written in a conversational style that I could imagine transferring to stand-up very well but always feels a bit amateur to me when written down to be read.

Really Good, Actually: The funny, relatable No. 2 Sunday

Jon said, “What do you think, Maggie,” and I said “Yeah, okay”; and so we got married, because everyone else was, and because nothing being particularly wrong felt, at the time, like everything was right. Vacations” and “frequency of family reunions” make the list too – useful to remember in the wake of the holiday season. You know how every book about a young woman is described as “darkly funny” and then it’s actually only depressing? Really, though, let's all encourage our friends to seek professional help when we can see they're clearly struggling and we don't have the tools to help them.

Or because we went to Paris and had an argument instead of falling more in love or at least rimming each other. Certainly, you are not supposed to be twenty-eight years old and actively planning a birthday party with the dress code “Jimmy Buffett sluts. Somewhere in the midst of Maggie’s adventures – flirtations with bisexuality, frantic spin classes, recreational axe throwing – she is grappling with the question of responsibility. Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4 am, and “get back out there” sex-wise.

Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey | CBC Books Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey | CBC Books

A smart and funny coming-of-divorce novel, a story of self-reckoning with a likable heroine to root for . Her comedic talents are in no doubt in this effort, but she demonstrates a rare insight into modern relationships too. It risks a certain glibness, allowing Heisey to skate over the more serious concerns buried inside the book: the deep feelings of brokenness and loss that come in the wake of a failed relationship. Heisey is making a career out of guiding characters through the kinds of crises we can laugh at and sympathize with all at once, while upending enough rom-com tropes to keep things interesting. It was a long time ago, but I do remember doing some pretty crazy shit, so I had a decent amount of compassion for Maggie.Monica Heisey isn’t just interested in the romantic side of divorce, but in how our identities collapse and the freefall that accompanies it. This is a wonderful story about love, loss, friendship, rediscovering yourself and the hope that after coming messily apart it is possible to come back together fuller again. Or because we fell in love too young, and how could our actual lives compare to the idea we’d had of what our lives could be when we were barely twenty and our bodies were almost impossibly firm? If Bridget Jones had a long-lost Canadian niece, it would be Monica Heisey's utterly lovable hot-mess of a young divorcee, Maggie.

Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey | Waterstones

it was a great insight into what people really go through in cleaving their life from someone else's. This morning, after he left, I’d almost immediately taken a photo of myself, wanting to “preserve the moment” and entertaining grandiose ideas about this horrible loss marking the start of a very creatively generative time. Not going to lie, I do enjoy reading books about young white women spiralling, behaving badly and trying to figure it out. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage only lasted 608 days, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée™.Her first job screenwriting position was on the Baroness von Sketch Show, [1] for which she is a four-time Canadian Screen Award winner. Everyone went on and on about Sally Rooney capturing women’s lives but I didn’t see myself on those pages. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of single life, intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor and asking herself tough questions along the way. A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. The kind of book you miss when you finish but that also leaves you feeling so deliciously content and satisfied.