... wrestles with the idea that a central struggle of humanity is to fit in while also standing out — to be normal, but not ordinary. This theme can be found on every page, though I wouldn’t say any two stories are alike ... Wurzbacher deploys her encyclopedic command of various ideas, regions, professions and lexicons with the authority of seasoned masters like Adam Johnson. This is a writer at the top of her game; but hopefully she’s only just getting started.
The private, intimate stories of Ashley Wurzbacher’s Happy Like This navigate deciphering oneself with impeccable logic. Unfastening and opening the shell around each narrator’s heart, answers hang over the collection, both banner and pall ... The relationships within stories are varied and riveting ... Full of the strange ordinariness of relating, Happy Like This hits a nerve, vital and bewitching.
... impressive ... Wurzbacher dives into the lives of women in this brilliant collection, examining the ways they live and relate to each other while harboring their own secrets and feelings. Her lyrical prose and unflinchingly confrontational voice are powerful and captivating.
Wurzbacher is careful not to treat any of her character’s experiences as universal conditions. With the details in each of these stories, Wurzbacher builds worlds within worlds, taking a nameless suburbia or an anonymous university campus and populating each with complex, connected characters, all curious about how they fit into the world around them ... Perhaps the balance between these details and the universal questions in each of these stories is why the settings feel so expansive and the emotional journeys of these characters feel so true.
