Always Happy Hour: Stories

"I adore Mary Miller's stories and you will too. Read this book and then read her others. Like, now." — Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

Combining hard-edged prose and savage Southern charm, Mary Miller showcases biting contemporary talent at its best. Fast on the heels of her "terrific" (New York Times Book Review) debut novel, The Last Days of California, she now reaches new heights with this collection of shockingly relatable, ill-fated love stories.

Acerbic and ruefully funny, Always Happy Hour weaves tales of young women — deeply flawed and intensely real — who struggle to get out of their own way. They love to drink and have sex; they make bad decisions with men who either love them too much or too little; and they haunt a Southern terrain of gas stations, public pools, and dive bars. Though each character shoulders the weight of her own baggage — whether it’s a string of horrible exes, a boyfriend with an annoying child, or an inability to be genuinely happy for a best friend — they are united in their unrelenting suspicion that they deserve better.

These women seek understanding in the most unlikely places: a dilapidated foster home where love is a liability in "Big Bad Love," a trailer park littered with a string of bad decisions in "Uphill," and the unfamiliar corners of a dream home purchased with the winnings of a bitter divorce settlement in "Charts." Taking a microscope to delicate patterns of love and intimacy, Miller evokes the reticent love among the misunderstood, the gritty comfort in bad habits that can’t be broken, and the beat-by-beat minutiae of fated relationships.

Like an evening of drinking, Always Happy Hour is a comforting burn, warm and intoxicating in its brutal honesty. In an unforgettable style that distinguishes her within her generation, Miller once again captures womanhood in "a raw…and heartbreaking way" (Los Angeles Review of Books) and solidifies her essential role in American fiction.

"Taken as a whole, this harrowing yet ultimately enjoyable collection is less about the conventions of storytelling — exposition, climax, denouement — and more of a meditation on the stories a person tells herself." Hilary Moss, New York Times Book Review

"Somewhere between the old trope of the fallen woman and the unctuousness of the likable heroine, the young narrators of Miller’s searching stories inhabit the middle space known as reality.... Anyone who’s faltered on the way to success and contentment might find solace in the do-gooder in "Big Bad Love," or the boozy, boyfriend-enabled composition teacher in the title story." Boris Kachka, Vulture

"The stories in Mary Miller’s Always Happy Hour are full of wit, bite, and the boundless intelligence of their author. This book is further evidence for what I felt after reading her brilliant debut novel, The Last Days of California, that Mary Miller is an astonishingly gifted writer. Her next one can’t come soon enough." Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds

"Readers will find themselves riveted…. The 16 stories in this collection… feel both homey and exotic, limning lives at once familiar and distinctly their own. Like a two-for-one drink special or a boxful of beer, this bracingly strong collection may prove intoxicating." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"Stellar… Miller’s collection feels so true because it never glosses over the desperate or unflattering portrayals of its narrators, but neither does it exploit their faults. These stories acutely explore boyfriends, exes, poor choices, and the sad fallout of so many doomed relationships." Publishers Weekly (Starred and Boxed Review)

Mary Miller is the author of The Last Days of California and the short story collection Big World. She is a former James A. Michener Fellow in Fiction and John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. She lives in Gulfport, Mississippi.