Storytelling: Nicola Haken

Counting Daisies, The Making of Matt, and, my favorite, Broken, are a few of the titles I’ve read by Nicola Haken. She’s good for exposing both sides of a story, going into the emotions and the suffering and she’s really good at conveying how broken some people are and how they don’t always get to have the happily-ever-after. Not that they can’t be happy, you know, but that it’s not this riding off into the sunset kind of thing. She likes to leave her stories at a point where there’s going to be some difficulties ahead and you know this, there is no question about it. Things are not just going to sail smoothly and I really, really, really appreciate that because I like questionably happy endings. I like things that leave you thinking that there’s more to it, that there could be an epilogue and another short story because we need to catch up on these people and see how they’re faring. Did they relapse? Are they still together? Did they make it work? That sort of thing, that’s my kind of story. I like the sad but hopeful stories. I like to see that even though you’re fractured in some way, even though you are suffering in some way, that things can be alright, that you don’t have to suffer endlessly in the same way. It’s not going to be easy for you or the people around you all the time, but you can do this. You can live a life. Struggle free, no, but with help and support and effort you can definitely live a good life. I want stories like that, and she delivers.