Allie Interrupted

Rating 4.5/5 ☕☕☕☕

Marissa Higgins’ debut novel A Good Happy Girl is nothing short of visceral. Higgins has an unquestionable ability to use her prose to assault all five senses simultaneously. This novel will churn your stomach, pull at your heart strings and make your pulse quicken (from arousal or discomfiture – depending on your own predispositions) all at once. This novel is an absolute whirlwind of raw and unmitigated feeling from cover to cover, that leaves the reader both over-stuffed and unsatiated by its conclusion.

We spend the short journey nestled in the mind of our narrator and main character Helen, who’s grip on reality is shaky, to say the least, perhaps in part due to her raging cough syrup addiction. At the onset of the story, we learn that Helen is semi-estranged from her family and haunted by a past of neglect and mistreatment. The trauma she has endured has left her with a gaping emotional wound that threatens to swallow her whole at any given moment. And, like any protagonist with mommy/daddy issues- she seeks weird sex to assuage her misery. Her most recent attempt at a remedy? A married couple named Katrina and Catherine who have agreed to engage in an arrangement that involves tormenting and doting upon Helen.

An Unsatisfied Craving

This novel is one enduring and all-consuming craving. The stunning cover art picturing a woman unhinging her jaw to take a ravenous bite of an overstuffed burger, does an amazing job of cluing the reader into the yearning and desire that Helen emits from within its pages. This book kept a sustained rhythm throughout, punctuated by three distinct scene types- their unifying feature being an insatiable craving for fullness.

Sex

“I resisted the urge to pull both of them to the floor beside me. Watching happiness has always unsettled me.”

I can’t get into the nuances of the sexual intimacy of this book without first saying how meaningful it is to read a book featuring lesbians, written by a lesbian. I am always blown away when I encounter a dynamic queer character outside of the romance genre – it is all too rare. Queerness is integral to the telling of this story, and I need to acknowledge how grateful I am to live in a time where I can access complex sapphic stories by simply taking a trip to my local library.

The sex in this book is adventurous and unusual- often intense and tender all within the same act. Helen uses sex to fill a void, to numb her pain, and to attempt to pacify her unmet emotional needs. However, she spends a lot of time during her sexual encounters craving something else- whether that is to better please her partner, to have pain inflicted upon her in some other way, or for another woman entirely. Her internal monologue in these scenes often comes across as desperate- desperately craving validation and contact, desperately trying to avoid rejection or disappointment. Higgins’ unique writing style really immerses the reader in these moments of anxious eroticism, which really contributes to the novel’s all-around sensation of visceral realness.

Food

“The burger was already thick and difficult to eat … There I thought, mashing down the fries into the butter lettuce and ketchup. Perfect.”

Oddly enough, it was the scenes where Helen was eating that most captivated me. These food scenes always came at times when she was ripping her deep emotional wound further open- her actions, choices and realizations chipping away at a scab leaving her open, exposed. Higgins describes her consumption in such detail. Smells, textures, the sensation of chewing, are all so palpable in each of these scenes. Another commonality is that Helen is always eating to excess in these instances, frantically stuffing herself full as she pours out personal information or exposes her vulnerability to the people dining with her. Her over consumption in these instances seems to be quite contrast to her usual eating habits as its insinuated that she primarily subsists off of cough syrup and prepackaged snacks. In several scenes this insatiable compulsion to devour excess amounts of food contributes to her becoming physically sick, and yes, that is described in just as much detail- those with emetophobia beware.

Suffering

“I wanted to slam my face into the top of the porch. I wanted to split my front teeth. I wanted to know which would scream and which would call an ambulance.”

As deeply as she craves unconventional sexual pleasures or uncharacteristically large meals, Helen also desires to be cared for, which in turn leaves her craving illness and injury almost constantly. Her intrusive thoughts of knocked out teeth, drowning, or succumbing to poisoning begin on page one and persist very consistently throughout her internal monologue for the duration of the book. It seemed to me that she craved both the pain and the concern and care that would supersede it in equal amounts. The part of her psyche dominated by self-loathing desired affirmation by getting the punishment and brutality she believed she deserved for lacking “goodness” and the part of her that strives tirelessly to be perceived as good seeks compassion and comfort by any means necessary. The duality of this craving was poignant and stuck with me well after reading.

Final Thoughts

While the theme of craving and the expert us of vivid imagery to convey this throughout the novel stood out most to me, there is so much more to this fantastic work of contemporary fiction. It is such a disorienting and intriguing read that invites the reader to interrogate concepts of self, the proliferation of destructive cycles and family dynamics, and the way that trauma and the animalistic instinct for self-preservation can override logical thought.

My only critiques are: One, there are no quotations marks, which I understand is a stylistic choice, but I missed them. Two, I would have loved a little more background on all of our main characters, I typically prefer my books a bit longer and I thinking getting a little more nitty-gritty exposition on our leading ladies would have only served to strengthen the story.

Overall, A Good Happy Girl is a must read for fans of all things raw and unsettling; an absolutely explosive debut for Higgins, I can’t wait to get my hands on her next work, Sweetener in 2025!