Small Joys of Real Life

by Allee Richards

The night Eva shared a smile with Pat, something started. Two weeks later, lying together in her bed, Pat said, 'You can't live your life saying you'll get around to doing something you know will make you happy. You just have to do it.'

Eva didn't know how devastating those words would turn out to be. Pat dies and the aftershock leaves Eva on unsteady ground. She is pregnant. And she has to make a choice.

Suddenly, the world that she at times already questioned, her career, her roommates and friends, and life in the inner-city are all even harder to navigate. Her best friends, Sarah and Annie, are also dealing with the shifts and changes of their late twenties, and each of them will at times let the others down.

Small Joys of Real Life is a poignant and unpredictable novel from an exciting new literary talent about how the life you have can change in an instant. It's about friendship, desire, loss and growing up to accept that all you can do is be in the moment and look to find the joys in between.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Australia, Adult Fiction, Grief, Womens, Book Club

300 pages, Paperback

First published July 28, 2021

About the author

Allee Richards' short fiction has been published widely in Australian literary magazines and anthologies, including Kill Your Darlings, The Best Australian Stories, New Australian Fiction, Best Summer Stories, The Lifted Brow, Voiceworks and Australian Book Review. Small Joys of Real Life is her first novel. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers and the 2020 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. She lives in Melbourne and works as a theatre lighting technician.

Reviews

[Jaclyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read Allee Richards’s work while judging the Victorian Premier’s Literary awards. I fell hard and deep. Here was a writer who wrote for me (not about me, FOR ME). Just.For.Me. And now she’s gone and written me (and you) a novel. I loved every single melancholia-imbued sentence. Her phrasing is beautiful (with just one ‘slimy, hot meat’ exception which I will never recover from). The premise is a young woman finds out she’s pregnant a few weeks after the guy she hooked up with suicided. It’s such a ripe conceit for joy mingled with sadness, my favourite mood/tone/vibe. This book has strong Monkey Grip and Our Magic Hour energy and not just because 20-somethings ride bicycles in northern Melbs but because these very real characters explore their very real grief, joy, love, friendship and pain in very real ways. This might be a ‘quiet’ book but damn I love quiet books and plan to be very loud about this one. READ IT! I might feel like Richards wrote it for me, but I have a strong feeling you’ll feel like she wrote it for you.

[Jess Trevaskis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing happened. Genuinely. I have never read a book where less happens.
There weren’t any loveable characters. The dialogue was clipped and detached. This took away from the friendships that were meant to be relatable and close.
The concept was unique, yet the way it was executed was boring and prevented me from being emotionally involved.
Not a fan.

[Liz]

I've also contemplated my life choices at the KFC on St Georges Road and while listening to a Jen Cloher album, so I think it was mandatory for me to like this.

[Madelon North · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this within 24 hours. I am in love with the writing, the story, the characters. The Melbourne setting of the inner north. The nods to country Victoria. It’s a story of relationship, of what we leave behind. It sits in that contemporary millennial novel we’ve seen happening recently, and what a debut. I’m obsessed with all the wonderful Australian debuts we’ve had in the last year or so. I’m sitting with this one to do a proper review when it’s published next week. But if you’re a fan of dropping in and out of peoples lives, people just being people in all their flawed wonder, then run to pre order.

Thank you to Hachette for gifting me this copy for a review.

CW: suicide, drug use, alcohol use, abortion

[georgie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book but it was a let down for me. I was hoping for more joy! This book felt bogged down by the moody and self-absorbed narration of the MC, who didn't really change much or grow as a person throughout her journey.

[Ipso · Rating 1 out of 5]

I loved the Melbourne references in this novel but I found it hard to empathise with or relate to Eva and Sarah. Eva seemed arrogant, whiny and more than a little stalky. She goes swimming - hates it. Orders a sandwich - hates it. Has sex with a lad- despises him. The character has no warmth or colour and as she lacked compassion for those around her. The ending is deeply dissatisfying and seems like the sort of thing you'd belt out when the number of pages your editor requires exceeds your creativity and you have no idea hot to wrap things up.

[Ronnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this novel about selfishness and selflessness, adulthood and motherhood. There's so much I recognise of myself and my friends in Eva, Annie and Sarah, three indelible young women who are never reduced to solely archetypes. Small Joys of Real Life is emotionally nuanced in ways that both comforted and challenged me.

[Cameron Gibson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Please no more books about motherhood. Why is that such a thing right now? Or is that just me? It seems every book I read lately has something to do with motherhood. Before that it was strenuous mother-daughter relationships. I’m tired of it. I was never interested in it to begin with. Enough!

Despite what I literally just said, this book was actually very nice to read. It was odd, funny and warmly nostalgic to read a story of twentysomethings living in Melbourne‘s inner-north. It was a strange story in the sense that I’m not sure how I felt about the protagonist; which maybe is how I’m supposed to feel about the protagonist. In a general sense the narrative feels somewhat congruent with books I’ve read recently such as ‘You Be Mother’ and ‘Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead’. Specifically though, Allee’s writing is quite stunning, undeniably smooth, confident but gentle.

It did almost feel like the subplots ran out of time. The timeline is perfect for the main narrative - obviously - but the subplots didn’t feel as though they fit comfortably into that timeline and we’re kind of left with unsatisfactory loose ends. I have unanswered questions which on one hand I don’t care enough to really want the answer to and on the other hand I feel like the lack of explanation reflects real life in a way that is extremely fitting with the tone of this book.

Overall I enjoyed this more than I expected to but not enough for it to stick with me. 3.5 ⭐️

[Jules · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sweet and gentle story of Eva, who falls pregnant after one night with a man who soon after dies by suicide, and navigates her pregnancy with her two best friends - and a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting - by her side.

The book grows as it goes along. I wasn’t feeling Eva’s attempts at crude or dark humour in the beginning and there were way too many geographical references for my taste (a pet hate of mine: you can write local without sounding like you’re giving directions, and there’s such pressure to get it right when you’re being that specific - nobody from Kangaroo Ground refers to it as “the country”) . But all this soon eases up as Eva, and Richards, finds her voice and I settled in.

I particularly enjoyed the way Richards explored the connection between pregnancy and sexuality: showing Eva sexting before falling asleep on the couch, marveling at her changing body being an object of desire and a beautifully body positive scene at a nude beach. I like how this part of Eva’s life doesn’t stop just because she is pregnant and without a partner.

Like every book written by a young woman and set in the inner north, Small Joys is being compared to Monkey Grip - I have to say I’m not getting those vibes despite similar content. It doesn’t have the grit or the angst, but it doesn’t need to either. Underneath it all, Small Joys is full of hope which makes for a nice change in Melbourne’s literary landscape, especially considering the state of the world at the moment.

[Theresa Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gorgeous novel this turned out to be. I’m such a huge fan of contemporary life-lit reads, those novels that get inside the lives of the characters, where they aren’t plot driven, but simply about life, in all its pain and glory. Small Joys of Real Life is about friendship and grief. About mourning not only the loss of someone, but the loss of all the potential they had to be within your own life.

The beauty of this story lies in its purity. Eva thought she’d found someone who might have been ‘the one’. Yet he dies, within weeks of them meeting. And she is left pregnant. As she navigates through her pregnancy with the support of her two best friends, she is also mourning the loss of Pat, the Pat she had just begun to get to know, along with the Pat she uncovers by digging through old social media posts made by him and his close friends. She forms a narrative of what their life together might have been like, had he lived.

This novel is devastating, yet beautifully uplifting at the same time. Allee Richards is a true literary talent. Her next novel is out later this year and I can’t wait.

[Amy Polyreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allee Richards can bloody write. It’s true what Crupi says “strong Monkey Grip & Our Magic Hour energy”, and not just for the nostalgic Melbourne setting. This is a story about a young woman’s journey through pregnancy, but it’s also the story of long lasting female friendship. It’s incredibly perceptive, melancholic, and corporeal. I just adored this and it’s gone straight into my top books of 2021.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book which is unpredictable in the most earnest and endearing of ways. The characters are layered, complex and convincing, and the story utterly uncontrived. I couldn't predict what would happen at any turn, not because there were any 'gotchas' but because it was so rivetingly realistic. Humans are, after all, inexplicable animals.

[Anna Davidson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poignant and delightful story about the complexity and chaos of life in your twenties. The characters grew on me the deeper I got into the story. I loved the ending; satisfying, yet enough ambiguity to keep one curious and thinking about the story well after the book has finished.

[Jillwilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readings bookshop promoted this book a little while ago – they said it was “Perfect for fans of Helen Garner and Sally Rooney, this is an accomplished debut novel about how the life you have can change in an instant.” So it was “Add to cart”. Small joys during lockdown – the parcel delivery, a new book, a pile of new books.

I liked it a lot. I’ve been reading a bit of this kind of fiction lately – I think of it as Millennial Girl Fiction. It focuses on the ins and outs of friendships (and love relationships but this is often secondary). The fiction features complex young women who are slightly or very dissatisfied with the opportunities that life has served up. The depictions of the women in Millennial Girl Fiction are complex and well-rounded. The men described in Millennial Girl Fiction are often not up to much. They are disappointing creatures. The women usually have better and closer relationships with their women friends, though the meat of the novel is often about the tensions in these relationships.
So this fine example of Millennial Girl Fiction is set in Melbourne and it was very pleasing as a Melburnian then restricted to a five km radius of home to read about the main character Eve rocking up to a bar in Northcote, going to a gig in Fitzroy, riding her bike down St Georges Rd, and other very Melburnian things. Eve is in her late 20s. She and a man named Pat interact briefly at a house party in the inner-north of Melbourne. Two weeks later, they meet again at a gig; a few weeks after that, another house party. They go home together that night. Then Pat commits suicide, and Eva discovers she is pregnant with his child. (This info is established on the back cover of the novel – so no spoilers here.)

Eve really liked Pat. But it’s not clear how he thought about her. The novel is narrated in first person with occasional asides to “you” – as Eve struggles with Pat’s death and imagines talking to him. This works well – it creates an intimacy that brings the reader right up close to Eve and her feelings. After they spent the night together, Pat told Eve “…you can’t live your life saying you’ll get around to doing something you know will make you happy. You just have to do it.” One thread through the novel focuses on this idea – what will make Eve happy. What will have to change in her life? This thread also plays out in the lives of her friends who are facing their own questions about happiness.

One other thread is her attempt to find out more about Pat and what he was like. She is quite obsessed with this task. I guess that he is the father of the child she’s having. And the last thread is the relationship that she has with her two friends, Annie and Sarah. Richards manages this very well – the ins and outs of friendship, the jealousies and love. Here’s a bit of a summary of where they are at: “An actor on the cusp of a brilliant career, Eva feels like a fraud. She is at the age where society says drinking, drugs and casual sex should make way for maturity. By now, you should know what direction you’re heading in. But Eva has no idea. Her closest friends are Sarah and Annie. Sarah is still pushing her boundaries. Annie has just been nominated for a high achiever’s award. And Eva, well, Eva is pregnant.” (https://www.artshub.com.au/news/revie...) The stuff about friendship is really strong.
As one reviewer says: “ Richards’ clever craft is such that these fictional characters feel like people you might love, and be exasperated by, in real life.

The only bit that I thought needed more work is the plot elements which pertain to Pat’s friend Travis. I felt like the plot was going to become more developed than it does. It feels like there was once more there that was written out in the final version. Anyway, it’s a small thing.
The reviewer in The Monthly makes some interesting comparisons with other writers publishing novels at the moment: “Thematically and stylistically, Small Joys is reminiscent of what’s known as “millennial literature”, especially work by Irish authors Sally Rooney and Naoise Dolan, in which cultivated yet flattened prose evokes the monotony and sense of futility inherent in life under late capitalism. It is important, however, not to elevate such stories to the universal. The characters in Small Joys conform to an emerging trope that the critic Rebecca Liu calls the “archetypical Young Millennial Woman”, who is “pretty, white, cisgender, and tortured enough to be interesting but not enough to be repulsive”. Further, despite often being described as “relatable”, she is “more beautiful, more intelligent, and more infuriatingly precocious than we are in real life”. This description certainly characterises Eva, who is a talented actress without being devoted to her craft, and who effortlessly obtained an agent and several roles straight out of drama school.”
https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/am...

And another reviewer: “It’s another narrative predicated on the sense of millennial hopelessness and angst made famous by the likes of Sally Rooney (Normal People), Anna Hope (Expectation), Dolly Alderton (Ghosts) and Frances Macken (You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here), but with a quintessential Melburnian feel. Like the women in the aforementioned stories, Eva and her friends don’t have huge problems, they’re just grappling with the same sort of pensiveness that seems embedded in the psyche of anyone born after 1983.” (https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...)

Aaah – the curse of being compared to Sally Rooney. I enjoyed this novel.

[nina.reads.books · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d been hanging out to read Small Joys of Real Life by Allee Richards for some months before I finally picked up a copy a few weeks ago. It sounded exactly like the kind of Australian fiction I love to read – young women in their twenties and thirties facing the realities of modern life.

In this case the reality of Eva’s life is that she falls pregnant after a one night stand with Pat. However soon after their night together Eva finds out that Pat has died by suicide. Eva decides she wants to keep the baby but she also suddenly quits her job as an actor, doesn’t tell people who the father of her child is and generally starts to spiral a little bit. The book charts the course of her pregnancy and her attempts to make sense of her life. Her best friends Sarah and Annie are there with her along the way.

While this is a book about having a baby it is also a book about hitting your late twenties and being unsure about your life, your career and your choices. But it is also about the beauty and comfort of your friendships – the people that have had your back and watched you fail and succeed and stood by you regardless. It’s also about finding small moments of joy within the big real life issues we all have to deal with.

I enjoyed this book but didn’t fall in love with it as much as I thought I might and I can’t quite pinpoint why this was. The writing was well done and reading Eva’s thought processes as she wonders whether she is doing the right thing, experiences changes in her body and makes sense of her new reality was definitely engaging. I liked how we also got to hear Eva’s thoughts about Pat in several short chapters which were written as though Eva was speaking to him and trying to find out more about him.

[Steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes I feel like I’m still the same person I was in my late 20s, and then I read books like this and realise I’m really not. The characters are relatable and also tiresome. I’m sure I’ve met them at an inner-northern-Melbourne sharehouse party but they thought I was too nerdy/vanilla and I got exasperated by how they were critical of most things but disinterested in solutions; we didn’t keep in touch.

[Tyshana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish this book never ended!

[Sarah]

every time i’ve been in a bookshop in the last six months i picked up this book bc i loved the cover then put it back down bc the blurb did nothing for me

but i’m really glad i read it, despite a vague sense of cognitive dissonance every time someone had a go at sarah

i love books set in melbourne and i love books about women and their friendships and i love vague references to house parties in the inner north. eva possibly needs to get her shit together a bit better but i love the way she observes the world, even when sometimes it’s objectively ridiculous.

also, given that it was set around the suburbs i want to move to, i have to say it served as quite a helpful rental guide. for example, “now northcote is full of cafes owned by people who don’t live here and expensive children’s clothing stores, and the houses are owned by afl players.” this is useful to know. i will not move to northcote.

[Wiebke (1book1review) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a solid read, following the main character through her pregnancy and other life stuggles in that time. There is a strong focus on her and lotof the time it is hard to be on her side. But then there are also her two best friends and their friendship is a huge part of the book.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars
A very easy read - really enjoyed the characterisation

[Ellie (What Ellie Reads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished reading Small Joys of Real Life by Allee Richards in a day because I loved it so much. It felt like a book that was written especially for me - the central character, Eva, lives where I live. Her friends could be my friends. I loved the characters, the Melbourne setting, the storyline, the writing style. I basically couldn’t fault this book.

Synopsis: After a one night stand with a friend of a friend, Pat, Eva finds out that she is pregnant. Deciding to keep the baby, she must do it alone while grappling with her confusion and grief when she learns that Pat has died.

I’ve seen a few reviews describing this book as ‘heartbreaking’ but I actually felt the opposite. I found the depiction of female friendships, following your dreams and having confidence to do the unexpected uplifting and a joy to read. Eva goes through a lot during this story: she decides to raise a child on her own, she quits her job, she moves out on her own; but she does all this with her incredibly strong support network by her side, especially her friends Sarah and Annie. Although every character in Small Joys is flawed in their own way, they’ll go above and beyond to help each other out when it’s needed. The depiction of friendship and love in this novel was what resonated with me the most.

The writing was brilliant, and I especially enjoyed the way the book was broken down into the months of Eva’s pregnancy, with short chapters detailing her journey through each month. I’d go as far as to describe Allee Richards as Australia’s answer to Sally Rooney (but, dare I say it, better?). The way she writes is a slightly detached, melancholy, thoughtful fashion reminded me of Rooney’s style, but with a little more hope tied in.

Small Joys of Real Life is a stunning debut from a Melbourne author I’ll be watching in the years to come.

5 ⭐️

CW: suicide, abortion

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this overall a pretty easy read but reflecting on the book I have no idea how I feel or if I liked it.
I felt there was a big lead up around the pregnancy and the meeting of pats parents and then nothing? It feels like it’s missing a couple of chapters/pages or at least a chapter in the future.
My feelings towards all the characters were a roller coaster of love and hate but I did enjoy that it was set in Melbourne and the cover.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

i loved this book!!! read it so quickly and it was touching, funny and heartbreaking

[Craig and Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Hachette for sending us a copy to read and review.
Such a real, raw and gritty story that plays out like TV drama.
The inner northern Melbourne suburbs as the backdrop and its demographic visibly represented.
Reflecting a younger generation as they find their passage through life with all the emotional turmoil and social challenges of today.
Eva is the main lead.
Pregnant and determined to bring the baby into the world and support it by herself as the father has died.
The death of Pat rocks her and anecdotes to him appears as she updates him on what’s happening.
Interesting dynamics are at play within her close circle of girlfriends, the best friend of the deceased and a friend with benefits.
The story is told in one month increments starting in September and concluding in April.
Segmenting time makes the reader realise what can happen in a month.
Social issues and mindsets of the young urbanites are littered throughout and make the infrastructure of the plot very real.
A contemporary and fresh writing style with punchy characters set in a familiar scene made this very enjoyable for me.
The unpredictable moves of the young will entertain and reiterate that some social patterns exist but new rules are out there.

[Jess Stanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this book. The title is apt - not too much actually happens in this book, and yet I was so compelled to keep reading that when I reached the end I desperately kept flapping the page, hoping for more. Allee Richards really captures small moments of the Melbourne indie arts scene and I enjoyed reading about familiar locations - The Tote, Red Stitch Actors Theatre, and Thornbury wine bars.
The protagonist, Eva, finds herself in the predicament of being pregnant to a man she barely knew. What makes the situation all the more complicated, however, is that she won't ever get the chance to know him because he has since suicided. Despite this information being readily available on the book's back cover, this early revelation still had me reeling thanks to Richards's wonderful plotting. What follows is a rumination on friendship, love, comfort and solitude that affected me in the kind of way that you feel an ache in your bones as you read.
This will be one of my favourite books of 2021, guaranteed.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book along with the Shameless Podcast May Read. To be honest, i enjoyed this book more than i thought i would!

I mean i could relate to Eva’s pregnancy journey… it was quite nice reading someone experiencing pregnancy and not sugar coating it.. cause it ain’t easy!

My favourite passage from this novel is: “Being pregnant is like being in a horror film, first the thing possessing you tries to escape your mouth. Then it pushes in every direction, expanding you from every angle. Then the finale, all that blood”

I 100% agree with the Shameless girls, Eva is not a optimistic protagonist. She is frustrating, and self involved… i found her totally unlikeable. I feel like this is intentional by Richards. At points i wanted to throw my book across the room… i wanted to yell at Eva! She was acting more like a teenager then a person in their late 20’s 😤.

A well written debut novel by Richards 👏🏻 i cant wait to see what else she produces

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eva, a twenty something successful actress who doesn’t like being an actress, falls pregnant to Pat, who very soon after suicides. Eva decides to continue with the pregnancy and this book is about her journey. She has two very close friends, a mother who plans to live close by and a friend with benefits to help her through. I am perhaps the wrong demographic for this book, but I did enjoy the Melbourne references. She attempts to get close to Pat’s friend, Travis to try and work out the reason for Pat’s suicide but nothing is resolved from this.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this! I loved the story, the characters, the writing, the ‘Melbourne-ness’ (it’s always fun reading about a place you know, it’s so familiar and puts you right there). Whilst melancholy and messy, the story rang so true.

I have to say, whilst I liked the ending, it left me wanting just a more. How I’d love a 2nd book!

I’d love to read more from Allen Richards. I found her style captivating with her ability to depict Eva’s emotions as well as her realizations.

[Isobel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I fully can’t figure out if I did in fact like this or not. It’s very much a “me” type book and yet I found myself annoyed at the book for the majority of it. I think in the last 100 pages I came round to it more. I can see how this could be loved or hated and I see both sides. I also just don’t understand the title

[Amy Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that explores the moments of grief after suicide and the normal moments of life we all face in-between. I loved the messy details of the female friendship between the 3 girls and how it felt real and not ‘perfect’. I did however find the ending abrupt and odd compared to the slower month by month narrative of the rest of the book and I don’t really feel like much happened at all.