Do you ever get sick of reading stories and books where you just know that everyone’s going to live happily ever after, and then someday they’ll die, the end?

I mean, technically, “someday they’ll die, the end” is the ending to just about all the stories we consume. (Maybe not the ones already set in the afterlife. The Good Place, anyone?)

We’re not alone; Margaret Atwood wrote about this inevitability decades ago in “Happy Endings.”

You probably know Atwood’s name already because of her most famous work, The Handmaid’s Tale, or perhaps its TV adaptation starring Elizabeth Moss. Personally, I love Margaret Atwood. I read the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale just days after it came out! I’m going to be a handmaid for Halloween!

Atwood also writes short stories, though, and “Happy Endings” is one of them. Published in 1983, it’s a very short short story, clocking in at around 1,300 words, which is the length of flash fiction, a genre of short stories that are usually under 1,500 words (or sometimes described as under 1,000).

I can only describe “Happy Endings” as very, very meta. Since it’s so short, any sort of summary or even a clue as to what happens in the story will probably ruin it for you, so instead, here are the first few sentences of the story.

John and Mary meet.

What happens next?

If you want a happy ending, try A.

“A” refers to the first of many sections of the story, labeled A-F.

I should warn you now, this review will contain some spoilers, or at minimum, hints to the plot of the story. It’s sort of unavoidable to say so little about flash fiction, but since it is so short, why don’t you stop reading this blog post and read the story first?

 

 

Still here? [Sigh.] Maybe this review will convince you to read it after all.

“Happy Endings” isn’t so much of a short story as it is seven vignettes, or perhaps it’s not even a story at all and rather a comment on stories in general. Knowing that this was written by Atwood lets it make a little more sense; there’s a lot of commentary about toxic masculinity and a joke or two about Canada and the idyllic middle-class life.

Humor is, in fact, the star of this story, whether from the overt repetition of John and Mary’s “stimulating and challenging” lives or the increasingly absurd plot events in each part. Second-person narration, where the subject is “you,” is used hilariously, my favorite time being, “You can see what kind of a woman she is by the fact that it’s not even whiskey.” (Out of context, this probably sounds really weird. I promise you it’s even weirder in context.)

What I loved most about this story was the way Atwood commented on fiction writing. No matter what, she argues, the ending is the same. It doesn’t matter if the characters are both perfect people; it doesn’t matter if there’s a tidal wave that destroys everything; it doesn’t matter if people are murderers or spies or cancerous. What matters more is the beginning.

And she ends the story so incredibly thoughtfully with a simple sentence: “Now try How and Why.”

Mind. Blown.

Because really, the point of a story is never just the ending. The ending is always the same; people die. We read stories to know how characters react to whatever gets thrown at them, to understand why they react the way they do. The intrigue never comes from the perfect, satisfying, typical life that the characters want to attain; rather, it comes from all the ways that this doesn’t happen.

I don’t know what exactly went through Atwood’s mind for her to write “Happy Endings,” and when I tried to look it up, all I got were blog posts and Wikipedia — hardly the most trustworthy sources out there. I’m serious! Even JSTOR hardly had anything about this story; “Happy Endings” has only a brief mention in a review of her anthology Murder in the Dark and inclusion in a list of stories written in second person.

Now, the informal, ~untrustworthy~ sources say that Atwood really didn’t know that what she was writing was metafiction. If we take what they said at face value, that’s a brilliant display of authorship; when was the last time you heard that someone wrote in a genre they didn’t know existed?

But, of course, we can’t know that for sure, at least not with a few Google searches; all references to this claim are on websites I haven’t even heard of.

The most meta part of it all is that Atwood kept on writing after this short story was published. Of course, she would! She’s a writer! But when you think about it, her books are still full of these “happy endings.” Doesn’t The Handmaid’s Tale [SPOILER ALERT] end with Offred’s short-term fate uncertain [END OF SPOILER ALERT] but with an inevitable fate of death? And doesn’t The Testaments do the same?

The ending doesn’t matter. We care about what happened in the middle.

And really, isn’t that what life is all about?

“Happy Endings” may only be a few pages long, but I promise you, it changes the way you look at stories. It really makes you think about what all the books you read, the movies you watch, and the podcasts you listen to (No? Just me? Okay.) have in common. If you can read this blog post, you can read Atwood’s story with no problem whatsoever.

(By the way, if you still haven’t read “Happy Endings” at this point, here’s a handy link so you can read it now. Aren’t I kind?)